Of course, in those days there were judges of the utmost strictness
as there are now, who insisted that the rules of evidence should be
rigidly adhered to. I may mention, one, whose abilities were of a
remarkable order, and whose memory is still fresh in the minds of many
of my contemporaries--I mean Mr. Justice Maule. His asthmatic cough
was the most interesting and amusing cough I ever heard, especially
when he was saying anything more than usually humorous, which was not
infrequently. He was a man of great wit, sound sense, and a curious
humour such as I never heard in any other man. He possessed, too, a
particularly keen apprehension. To those who had any real ability
he was the most pleasant of Judges, but he had little love for
mediocrities. No man ever was endowed with a greater abhorrence of
hypocrisy. I learnt a great deal in watching him and noting his
observations. One day a very sad case was being tried. It was that of
a man for killing an infant, and it was proposed by the prosecution to
call as a witness a little brother of the murdered child.

The boy's capacity to give evidence, however, was somewhat doubted by
the counsel for the Crown, John Clark, and it did honour to his sense
of fairness. Having asked the little boy a question or two as to
the meaning of an oath, he said he had some doubt as to whether the
witness should be admitted to give evidence, as he did not seem to
understand the nature of an oath, and the boy was otherwise deficient
in religious knowledge.

He was asked the usual sensible questions which St. Thomas Aquinas
himself would have been puzzled to answer; and being a mere child of
seven--or at most eight--years of age, without any kind of education,
was unable to state what the exact nature of an oath was.