Without suggesting that there is a great amount of perjury in English courts, for Englishmen respect the law and have a wholesome dread of indictments, we cannot pride ourselves on a system that uses what ought to be a very solemn ceremony on every trumpery occasion. In the County Courts alone a million oaths at least must be taken every year in England. And upon what trifling, foolish matters are men and women invited by the State to make a presumptuous prayer to the Almighty to withdraw from them His help and protection if they shall speak falsely.
Two women, for instance, have a dispute over the fit of a bodice; each is full of passion and prejudice, and quite unlikely to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Is it fair to ask them to take an oath that they will do so, and, in the language of Chaucer, to swear “in truth, in doom and in righteousness,” about so trivial a matter? Or, again, in an arbitration under the Lands Clauses Act, is it fitting that six land surveyors should condemn themselves to eternal penalties when everyone knows that, like the barristers engaged in the arbitrations, they are paid for services of an argumentative character rather than as witnesses of mere fact? As Viscount Sherbrooke said in an excellent essay on the oath, written at the time of the Bradlaugh case, “If you believe in God it is a blasphemy; if not, it is a hollow and shameless cheat.”
Any practical, worldly scheme to prevent perjury is of more use than a religious oath, and one might quote many historical instances in proof of this. Two widely apart in circumstance and period will show my meaning. The Ministers of Honorius on a certain occasion swore by the head of the Emperor, a very ancient form of oath. (Joseph, it may be remembered, swore “by the life of Pharaoh,” and Helen swore by the head of Menelaus.) The same Ministers, says Gibbon, “were heard to declare that if they had only invoked the name of the Deity they would consult the public safety (by going back on their word), and trust their souls to the mercy of Heaven; but they had touched in solemn ceremony that august seal of majesty and wisdom, and the violation of that oath would expose them to the temporal penalties of sacrilege and rebellion.” In like manner I remember a Jew, annoyed by apparent disbelief of his oath, saying before me in a moment of irritation, “I have sworn by Jehovah that every word I say is true, but I will go further than that: I will put down ten pounds in cash, and it may be taken away from me if what I say is not true.” What sane man will say that the oath, as an oath, is of practical use when for centuries we find instances such as these of the way it is regarded by the person by whom it is taken. But it will be said that if a man pleases he can to-day affirm. Undoubtedly that is so, but the average Englishman has a horror of making a fuss in a public place, especially about a matter of everyday usage. The other day I suggested to a man who was suffering from cancer in the tongue that he might take the Scotch oath instead of kissing the Book. He did it reluctantly, as I thought. Once, too I made the same suggestion to a witness at Quarter Sessions who was in a horrible state of disease, but he preferred to kiss the Book—which was afterwards destroyed.
The average man is like the average schoolboy, and would any day rather do “the right thing” than to do what is right. All of us have not the courage of Mrs. Maden, who was refused justice in a Lancashire county court as late as 1863 because she honestly stated her views on matters of religion. As Baron Bramwell pointed out in deciding the case, the judgment he was giving involved the absurdity of ascertaining the fact of Mrs. Maden’s disbelief by accepting her own statement of it, and then ruling that she was a person incompetent to speak the truth. Truly no precedent in English law can be over-ruled by its own inherent folly.
Later on, too, in our own time, we can remember the fate of Mr. Bradlaugh in his struggles with Courts and Parliament, and we can read in history the stories of George Fox and Margaret Fell. The cynic may say that these people made a great deal of fuss about a very unimportant matter; but, after all, the attitude of George Fox on the question of the oath was a very noble one.
“Will you take the oath of allegiance, George Fox?” asks the Judge in the Court of Lancaster Castle.
George Fox: “I never took an oath in my life.”
Judge: “Will you swear or no?”
George Fox: “Christ commands we must not swear at all; and the apostle: and whether I must obey God, or man, judge thee, I put it to thee.”