With the exception of dying declarations, all evidence in criminal matters, must be upon oath, therefore the affirmation of a quaker cannot be received on a coroners inquest.[234] In the too celebrated case of the Oldham Inquest on the body of John Lees, Mr. _Earnshaw_, a quaker surgeon,[235] who had attended the deceased, though much urged refused to be sworn, and his testimony was consequently rejected; a paper was subsequently delivered to the jury, containing the matter of his observation; this was very properly resented by the Coroner, as an illegal attempt to influence the jury, who by their oaths were bound to admit no information which wanted that legal sanction. While we were writing this article we were surprised to find that a Coroner for the County of Surry had permitted the letter of a Physician to be read to the jury, as evidence that a person deceased was of unsound mind; and on this evidence, (for we can scarcely suppose that the servants deposition to rheumatic headaches, was allowed to weigh,) a verdict of insanity was returned: we shall have subsequent occasion to comment on this _mala miserecordia_. OF MARRIAGE. As both our civil and religious institutions consider the matrimonial union as a necessary preliminary[236] to the legal propagation of our species, this as far as it is connected with medical science, will form the first subject of enquiry, in which we are to investigate who are and who are not capable of contracting this relation.[237] And this being a point originally of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, we shall in its examination, follow the order of the civilians, so far as it is necessary to our purpose; we shall accordingly consider the capacity of persons to contract marriage in respect of age, mental capacity, and corporeal fitness. Another question arises from consanguinity; and this though neither founded in nor determinable by medical evidence, may deserve a moment’s attention, since it is evident that the prohibition of marriage to certain degrees of kindred, though it may not have been suggested by physiological reasoning, is well warranted by it. Experience demonstrates both in the human and brute creation,[238] that a race continually bred through the same blood without admixture of a foreign stock, becomes small, weak, and degenerate; this is a fact too well known to the agriculturist in breeding cattle to require further observation. And it is fatally displayed in the royal and noble families of some foreign countries, whose policy has been supposed to require frequent intermarriages, and whose princes and nobles are thence distinguished from their countrymen by their animal, and frequently by their mental inferiority. Those who have travelled in the south of Europe will not be at a loss for examples in elucidation of this principle.