erested?"

"Why not? The judges even examine the parties themselves."

I then told him that the smallest direct interest in the issue of the
controversy, disqualified a witness with us, from the strong bias it
created to misrepresent facts, and even to misconceive them.

He replied with a smile,--"It seems to me that your extreme fear of
hearing falsehood, must often prevent you from ascertaining the truth.
It is true, that wherever the interest of a witness is involved, it has
an immediate tendency to make him misstate facts: but so would personal
ill-will--so would his sympathies--so would any strong feeling. What,
then, is your course in these cases?"

I told him that these objections applied to the credibility, and not to
the competency, of witnesses, which distinctions of the lawyers I
endeavoured to explain to him.

"Then I think you often exclude a witness who is under a small bias, and
admit another who is under a great one. You allow a man to give
testimony in a case in which the fortune or character of his father,
brother or child is involved, but reject him in a case in which he is
not interested to the amount of a greater sum than he would give to the
first beggar he met. Is it not so?"

"That, indeed, may be the operation of the rule. But cases of such
flagrant inconsistency are very rare; and this rule, like every other,
must be tried by its general, and not its partial effects."

"True; but your rule must at least be a troublesome one, and give rise
to a great many nice distinctions, that make it difficult in the
application. All laws are sufficiently exposed to this evil, and we do
not wish unnecessarily to increase it. We have, therefore, adopted the
plan of allowing either party to ask any question of any witness he
pleases, and leave it to the judges to estimate the circumstances which
may bias the witness. We, in short, pursue the same course in
investigating facts in court that we pursue out of it, when no one forms
a judgment until he has first heard what the parties and their friends
say on the subject."

On my return home, I repeated this conversation to a lawyer of my
acquaintance, who told me that such a rule of evidence might do for the
people in the moon, but it certainly would not suit us. I leave the
matter to be settled by more competent heads than mine, and return to my
narrative.

I farther learnt from this intelligent magistrate, that the territory of
the Happy Valley, or Oka