THE FAITH OF WITNESSES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 694, 6 August 1875, Page 4

THE FAITH OF WITNESSES.

—o — In a case'heard at the Westminster Police-court, the sitting magistrate delivered himself of a ruling which, if correct in law, seems to demand the attention of the legislature. A person named Leonard, who tendered himself as to witness for the prosecution on a charge of assault and of using abusive language, preferred Against one Patrick Carney, declined to he sworn, and' made an affirmation. Mr Woolryeh asked him why he declined to he sworn, upon which the witness replied that’he did not believe in a future state of rewards and punishments. Mr Woolryeh asked him whether he believed in a God. He said he did aot; he was an athiest. Mr Woolryeh said the law allowed certain persons, who from religious scruples objected to be sworn in the usual way, to make an affirmation, but, as the witness avowed he did not believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, he should not receive his evidence. Leonard afterwards came back to the court with a copy of the Act of Parliament, and protested a ;airst the magistrate being the arbiter between a witness and the law, aid submittedijth&t he hadja perfect right to* give evidence, Mr Woolrych said there was a higher authority than the law ; there was paramount principle in our law that a man who was an atheist was not competent to be a witness in a court of justice. Now, as to the latter point, we had always imagined that the last Act passed on this subject was expressly intended to supersede this “paramount principle,” and makeatheistsaclmissible witnesses; and if this is so either Mr Woolrych’s ruling was wrong and should be reversed, or] the Act is inoperative in form, and should be amended The reference to a higher authority than the law was surely hardly relevant. Mr Justice Maule, on the well known occasion of such an authority being appealed to by a prisoner, directed the jury that as the witness sommoned did not appear they were to deal with the case on the evidence of the prosecution alone. In any event, however, it seems a little illogical that Carney should escape punishment in this world because Lennard does not believe in punishment in the next,—Pall Mall Gazette