He pointed out that
nothing could with more certainty tend to increase the crime of
perjury than the multiplying custom-house oaths, and what are termed
oaths of office. ... In Ireland the habits of the common people are
already too lax with regard to truth. The difference of religion,
and the facilities of absolution, present difficulties so formidable
to their moral improvement as to require all the counteracting
powers of education, example, public opinion, and law. . . .
Multiplying oaths injures the revenue, by increasing incalculably
the means of evading the very laws and penalties by which it is
attempted to bind the subject. Experience proves that this is a
danger of no small account to the revenue; though trifling when
compared with the importance of the general effect on national
morality, and on the safety and tranquillity of the State, all which
must ultimately rest, at all times and in all countries, upon
religious sanctions. "It was not," my father observed, "by
increasing pains and penalties, or by any severity of punishment,
that the observance of laws can be secured; on the contrary, small
but certain punishments, and few but punctually executed laws, are
most likely to secure obedience, and to effect public prosperity.
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