Can there be a practice more pregnant with false morality than that of administering oaths in a court of justice? The language it expressly holds is, 'You are not to be believed upon your mere word'; and there are few men firm enough resolutely to preserve themselves from contamination, when they are accustomed, upon the most solemn occasions, to be treated with contempt. To the unthinking it comes like a plenary indulgence to the occasional tampering with veracity in affairs of daily occurrence, that they are not upon their oath; and we may affirm, without risk of error, that there is no cause of insincerity, prevarication and falsehood more powerful than that we are here considering. It treats veracity, in the scenes of ordinary life, as a thing not to be looked for. It takes for granted that no man, at least of plebeian rank, is to be credited upon his bare affirmation; and what it thus takes for granted, it has an irresistible tendency to produce.
Add to this, a feature that runs through all the abuses of political institution, it saps the very foundations of moral principle. Why is it that I am bound to be more especially careful of what I affirm in a court of justice? Because the subsistence, the honest reputation, or the life, of a fellow man, is there peculiarly at issue. All these genuine motives are, by the contrivance of human institution, thrown into shade, and we are expected to speak the truth only because government demands it of us upon oath, and at the times in which government has thought proper, or recollected, to administer this oath. All attempts to strengthen the obligations of morality by fictitious and spurious motives will, in the sequel, be found to have no tendency but to relax them.
Men will never act with that liberal justice, and conscious integrity, which are their highest ornament till they come to understand what men are. He that contaminates his lips with an oath must have been thoroughly fortified with previous moral instruction, if he be able afterwards to understand the beauty of an unconstrained and simple integrity. If our political institutors had been but half as judicious in perceiving the manner in which excellence and worth were to be generated, as they have been ingenious and indefatigable in the means of depraving mankind, the world, instead of a slaughterhouse, would have been a paradise.
Let us leave, for a moment, the general consideration of the principle of oaths, to reflect upon their particular structure, and the precise meaning of the term. They take for granted, in the first place, the existence of an invisible governor of the world, and the propriety of our addressing petitions to him, both which a man may deny, and yet continue a good member of society. What is the situation in which the institution of which we treat places this man? But we must not suffer ourselves to be stopped by trivial considerations. Oaths are also so constructed, as to take for granted the religious system of the country whatever it may happen to be.
Now what are the words with which we are taught, in this instance, to address the creator whose existence we have thus recognized? 'So help me God, and the contents of his holy word.' It is the language of imprecation.
I pray him to pour down his everlasting wrath and curse upon me if I utter a lie. It were to be wished that the name of that man had been recorded who first invented this mode of binding men to veracity. He had surely himself very slight and contemptuous notions of the Supreme Being, who could thus tempt men to insult him, by braving his displeasure. If it be thought to be our duty to invoke his blessing, yet surely it must be a most hardened profaneness that can thus be content to put all the calamity with which he is able to overwhelm us to the test of one moment's rectitude or frailty.
