The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 1868.

Westport Times, Volume 1, Issue 137, 8 January 1868, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 1868.

" The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you G-od.—Kiss the book." Such is the first thing that a person hears on entering a police or any other court of law, and uttered in such a manner as to strike anybody that instead of being a solemn proceeding it is nothing more nor less than a troublesome farce. The whole proceeding seems to be a burlesque from the moment that the witness or prosecutor enters the box and is sworn in a hurried sing-song manner till the proceedings are terminated, and the case is more often decided in favor of those who swear the hardest and bring the most witnesses to bear them out in their assertions —witnesses who can be bought for the price of a nobbier of brandy and a little tutoring to swear anything—than on the side of absolute truth and right. It is horrifying to see the way in which some apparently very respectable members of society wilfully perjure themselves iu order to gain some end. The heinousness of the sin they are committing is regarded as nothing, so that they can obtain the success of the object which they are interested in, either pecuniary or otherwise. Such being the case, and the oath being only regarded as a matter of form, a proceeding in which any responsibility is altogether ignored, would it not be better to abolish it altogether, and severely punish in case it should turn out that the statement made in the witness-box was false. It is a common practice to say that the form of oath adopted by heathen nations—the Chinese, for instance, is not binding on their consciences, and we laugh at the idea of an oath being binding, that entails the cutting off of a cock's head, the breaking a plate, or the blowing out of a luciler-match, and yet why should we laugh at and esteem these forms so light, when in our own case we treat an oath with perhaps not so great a respect as the disciples of Confucius. What can be the object in taking God's name in vain by swearing people who either don't believe in the nature of an oath, or do not regard the solemn nature of the ceremony, or who have made up their mind before they enter the court, to swear in any direction that best suits their interests. The : binding power that an oathformerly had upon the minds or upon the consciences of the great majority of the people seems to have waned considerably, and this, we must candidly confess is owing in a great degree to a spread of scepticism occasioned by the state of society. The power of an oath depends upon the belief that people entertain of a future state, and when the great mass notice that the whole proceeding' is treated as a mere burlesque <sr idle form by those who ought to know better, it is not to be supposed that the more ignorant of any mixed population would treat it differently. Another cause is the lax state of the law in relation to perjury. It is true we sometimes hear of a conviction for this breach of the law, but it must be in a very flagrant case indeed, and it is absurd to suppose that either of the terrors —the terror of a punishment in a future state, or the terror of the law—possesses any hold over evil-doers, who only laugh at it, and who consider that the bearing of a false witness is only one of the most venial of sins. "We do not for . one moment advocate the abolition of the oath if there is any virtue in it, ' but we do so most decidedly if, as we believe it is, considered only a mere idle form. We regard the calling : upon the Supreme Being to witness as • to the truth or falsehood of a statement as too serious a matter to be treated as it is in the majority of instances, and , therefore it would be better rather to abolish it altogether.