The period of the cases and arguments we have cited was that in which large and liberal principles of evidence were more declared, and more regularly brought into system. But they had been gradually improving; and there are few principles of the later decisions which are not to be found in determinations on cases prior to the time we refer to. Not to overdo this matter, and yet to bring it with some degree of clearness before the House, your Committee will refer but to a few authorities, and those which seem most immediately to relate to the nature of the cause intrusted to them. In Michaelmas, 11 Will. III., the King _v._ the Warden of the Fleet, a witness, who had really been a prisoner, and voluntarily suffered to escape, was produced to prove the escape. To the witness it was objected, that he had given a bond to be a true prisoner, which he had forfeited by escaping: besides, he had been retaken. His testimony was allowed; and by the Court, among other things, it was said, in secret transactions, if any of the parties concerned are not to be, for the necessity of the third, admitted as evidence, it will be impossible to detect the practice: as in cases of the Statute of Hue and Cry, the party robbed shall be a witness to charge the hundred; and in the case of Cooke _v._ Watts in the Exchequer, where one who had been prejudiced by the will was admitted an evidence to prove it forged.[64] So in the case of King _v._ Parris,[65] where a feme covert was admitted as a witness for _fraudulently_ drawing her in, when sole, to give a warrant of attorney for confessing a judgment on an unlawful consideration, whereby execution was sued out against her husband, and Holt, Chief-Justice, held that a feme covert could not, by law, be a witness to convict one on an information; yet, in Lord Audley's case, it being a rape on her person, she was received to give evidence against him, and the Court concurred with him, because it was the best evidence the nature of the thing would allow. This decision of Holt refers to others more early, and all on the same principle; and it is not of this day that this one great principle of eminent public expedience, this moral necessity, "that crimes should not escape with impunity,"[66] has in all cases overborne all the common juridical rules of evidence,--it has even prevailed over the first and most natural construction of acts of Parliament, and that in matters of so penal a nature as high treason. It is known that statutes made, not to open and enlarge, but on fair grounds to straiten proofs, require two witnesses in cases of high treason. So it was understood, without dispute and without distinction, until the argument of a case in the High Court of Justice, during the Usurpation. It was the case of the Presbyterian minister, Love, tried for high treason against the Commonwealth, in an attempt to restore the King. In this trial, it was contended for, and admitted, that one