1 The following passage is extracted from Lord Kaimes,* late one of the judges of the kingdom of Scotland.
‘Custom-house oaths now a-days go for nothing. Not that the world grows more wicked, but because nobody lays any stress upon them. The duty on French wine is the same in Scotland and in England. But as we cannot afford to pay this high duty, the permission underhand to pay Spanish duty for French wine, is found more beneficial to the revenue than the rigour of the law. The oath however must be taken that the wine we import is Spanish, to entitle us to the ease of the Spanish duty. Such oaths at first were highly criminal because directly a fraud against the public; but now that the oath is only exacted for form’s sake, without any faith intended to be given or received, it becomes very little different from saying in the way of civility, “I am, sir, your friend, or your obedient servant.” ’—Loose Hints upon Education, Appendix, p. 362. Edinburgh, 1781.
Archdeacon Paley* in a work, the seventh edition of which lies before me, and which is used as a text book in the university of Cambridge, speaks thus:
‘There are falshoods which are not lies; that is, which are not criminal; as—a servant’s denying his master, a prisoner’s pleading not guilty, an advocate asserting the justice, or his belief of the justice of his client’s cause. In such instances no confidence is destroyed, because none was reposed.’ Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, Book III. Part I. Chap. xv. London, 1790.