OATH TAKING.

Dunstan Times, Issue 602, 31 October 1873, Page 3

OATH TAKING.

The tattle of the oath, unlike that of freedom, is often fought and never won. Never, that is, as yet. It has been raging for years, and ourselves were with the earliest in the struggle for a more rational system of conducting that part of our jurisprudence. Man" years ago we urged the reforms now gradually rising ingreater demand, anil as the Attorney General has introduced a large scheme of legal reform, it is to be hoped that the old oath will be got rid of and a simply secular form be used instead. This will be in accord will the Attorney General's educat'onal scheme, and will get rid of a heap of impiously used old-world theological verl i ige. All that is wanted is a challenge to speak the whole ti uth under pain of punishment for wilful fain -hood either of speech or silence. “ Lex ”in the Argus proposes the adoption of the Scotch form of oath, the judge and witness bu.h standing and holding up their right. hands w'hilst the judge administers the following o;uh :—“ I swear by Almighty God, as 1 shall answer to God at the great Jay of judgment, that I will tell the truth, thewhole truth, and nothing but the truth.” ■* Lex ”is of the opinion tliis would reduce the amount of perjury, but we are not at all of that opinion, while the oath prescribed is open to nearly all the obj .ctionS of the English oath, and has some special ones of its own. It is a declaration of distinct doctrinal theology, and therefore inadmissible in a public place where the business is purely secular, and where people of all shades of faith and no faith, meet and act together. The abolition of all remit ints of doctrinal theology is the necessary sequel to the advance made by the State in its notions of its relations with the churches, and is the complement of the secular scheme of education now in vogue. We trust, therefore, that in the grand m-asure of law reform about to be inaugurated the sweeping away of all those discordant elements will be decided on, and witnesses not to be called on to swear at all, by God or by any theological prescription whatever, but simply to tell “ the truth, the whole truth, an I nothing but the truth.”—Ballarat Star.