No Innocence can be Safe, where Power and Malice are in Confederacy
against it. There’s No Fence against Subornation, and False Evidence.
What Greater Judgment can befall a Nation then for _Sheep_ to be made
_Trespassers_, and _Wolves_ _Kites_, and _Vultures_ to set up for
_Witnesses_! This is a large Field, if a body would Amplifie upon it: But
the History of the Age in Memory will be the Best Moral of This Fable.
There’s No Living however without Law: and there’s no Help for’t in many
Cases, if the Saving Equity be Over-rul’d by the Killing Letter of it.
’Tis the _Verdict_ that does the Business; but ’tis the _Evidence_, True
or False that Governs the _Verdict_. So that, (as it sometimes falls
out) the Honour of the Publick may come to be Concern’d in the Defence
and Support of an Undetected Perjury. The only Danger is the giving too
much Credit to the Oaths of _Kites_ and _Vultures_. That is to say, of
Witnesses so Profligate as to bring a Scandal even upon Truth it self,
where it is so Asserted.