Circumstances on which the witness had been silent when examined before the magistrate shortly after the event, make their appearance in his evidence on the day of trial; so that his memory purports to augment inaccuracy in proportion to their time which has elapsed since the transaction of which he speaks! I have observed this effect produced in a marvelous degree in cases of new trial, which in civil suits are often awarded, and which frequently take place years after the event to which they relate. The comparison of the evidence of the same witness as it stands upon the short-hand writer's notes of the two trials, would lead an unpracticed reader to the conclusion that nothing but perjury could account for the diversities; and this impression would be confirmed, if he should find, as in all probability he would, that the points on which the latter memory was better supplied than the earlier, were just those on which the greatest doubt had prevailed on the former occasion, and which were made in favor of the party on whose side the witness had been called. But the critic would be mistaken. The witness was not dishonest, but had failed to keep watch over the operations of his own mind. He had perhaps often adverted to the subject, and often discoursed upon it, until at length he confounded the facts which had occurred, with the inference which he had drawn from such facts, in establishment of the existence of others, which had in reality no place except in his own cogitation, but which after a time took rank in his memory with its original impressions. The best safeguard a witness could employ to preserve the unalloyed memory of transactions, is to commit his narrative to writing, as soon after the event as he shall have learned that his evidence respecting them is likely to be required; and yet I can hardly recommend such a course, because so little is the world, and even that portion of the world which passes its life in Courts of Justice, acquainted with what may be called the Philosophy of Evidence, that a conscientious endeavor of this kind to preserve his testimony in its purity, might draw upon him the imputation of having fabricated his narrative; and this is the more probable, because false witnesses have not unfrequently taken similar means for abiding by their fictions. It is worthy of note how much these disturbing causes, both moral and intellectual, fasten upon these portions of evidence which are most liable to distortion. Words, as contra-distinguished from facts, exemplify the truth of this position. Every witness ought to feel great distrust of himself in giving evidence of a conversation. Language, if it runs to any length, is very liable to be misunderstood, at least in passages.