Authorities have been quoted on the other side of the bar, but they are not the authorities of our law. The authority of Sir George Mackenzie is expressly in their teeth. This is the second time to-day, my Lords, that I have heard this respectable writer talked lightly of. I cannot but express my surprise at it. He was undoubtedly a man of the highest abilities, and he is our only criminal lawyer. I think he is the most intelligible and clear of all our writers, and I have read him with great profit. But his authority is to be held light in this matter, because his opinion is decisive in favour of this objection--an opinion which, though it were not delivered by such high authority in our law, is yet so much in unison with the common reason and common feelings of mankind that I should deem it to require no other support. The sentence of the Justices of Peace of Stirlingshire, it has been said, forms no objection to the admissibility of this witness, because it was pronounced without a jury, as all their sentences are. My Lords, this is not the reason. Sorry I am to say that, by a decision of your Lordships, magistrates of burghs and Sheriffs of counties have been found entitled to whip and imprison British subjects without a jury. But will it be maintained that persons so punished will not be accounted infamous and their testimony rejected? My Lords, the reason why the sentence of the Justices of Peace was held not to bar the admissibility of a witness was because they are not a Court of record, and your Lordships could not be legally certified of what was their judgment. Could this information have been legally obtained the _infamia facti_ would have been sustained as sufficient without the _infamia juris_. A man is equally infamous in either case if his punishment is merited. And why is _infamia facti_ not always admitted in our law as a sufficient bar, but merely because all objections to witnesses must be instantly verified, which would produce an infinite number of trials within trials, and, besides, which is far worse, would be trying a man without a libel, without allowing him time to produce witnesses, and without a jury. But the _infamia facti_, if proved--and in this case the proof is beyond dispute--is equally strong to render a witness inadmissible as any _infamia juris_. For it is not merely the sentence of a Court which makes a man intestable, but the fact that he is a villain. And this is an additional proof that His Majesty’s pardon, which undoubtedly does not justify the act, though it saves the actor, cannot take away the infamy attendant upon the crime of which he stands convicted.