Arizona citizen., 1875-04-24
PERJURY.

of character, and upon whom we have
 bestowed tue name of Uriah Heep, not
 because he is very humble or vicious or
 hypocritical, but because he is just the
 opposite, and we always did like con-
 trast. And when, in describing some of
 the qualities of our friend, we say that he
 takes to the law as naturally as does a
 newly landed Celt, the reader must not
 suppose that he is any the more a Heep
 reflection for that. We do not believe
 that Dickens meant to intensity Urlah' S
 evil propensities by putting him through
 6 course of law. The author merely gave
 to his great delineation certain strong
 lines of character which he had gathered
 in his observations of men, and sent him
 forth even as the Creator sent Adam forth.
 Adam slipped up on the apple, but expe-
 rience would lead us to believe that, had
 be encountered orange peel, his fall would
 have been as bad if not worse. The Uriah
 Keeps, burdened with all their vices, try
 their hard at the law and make it unpleas- ant for us all. But send these same char
 acters with the same vices into the
 Church, and this second venture is verse
 than the first. Go to the superlatiye de- gree of experiment and put the Heep
 family into the army, and dress parade them in positions from General to second
 lieutenant, and you have such 0 state of affairs as is too frequently seen in our
 army.
 But this is neither here nor there We
 met our friend Uriah shortly after the late discharge, on habeas cOrpUs, of the inno- cent man who had been committed Tn one of our justices courts, on charge of per jury. In the course of our conversation
 this matter came up and we said that as far as habeas corpus was concerned, we were pretty sure it was all right. We didn't really have any very clear ideas about habeas corpus, we said, although we did recollect-and it had given the ar
 ticle a very bad odor with us at the time,
 that during the civil war, every white
 Ivered coward, who was a rebel at heart but whe wished to live in the North and smuggle supplies and encouragement to the enemy, and in the meantime make little money by swindling honest bounty jumpers, would shriek habeas corpus like & parrot the moment he was inteTfered with. And we have never ceased to re- gret, that our delightful old friend Tony Weller should have made such a mistake ss to set his heart on alibi in preference to habeas corpus. But while we confessed that habeas corpus had always seemed to gs a heavy weight, stlll we had thought we knew something about perjury. We had always supposed that if q man made a statement under oath before an officer of the law upon any matter which would be liable to come under favorable or un N.r-o fNl !, s..l, ment the affiant knew to be utterly false, upeE the establishment of the premises he would stand indictable for perjury And we had much admired the strong bull wark and protection which the simple swearing of an oath afforded to life and its desirable adjuncts. But now all this Is l swept away like the baseless fabric, at this point Urah smiled cynical smile and interrupted: "Why, you poor inno- cent, knew this years ago. Now see what comes from understanding the law. Let me tell you that, in the case of which you have been speaking, no officer who understood the a, b, c, of law, would have been so foolish as to commit for per jury; and under the circumstances, no re- viewing authority could have refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus without showing himself utterly unfit for his posi- tion. Perjury is one of the biggest bug bears used to frIghten children and fools. The common run of mankind would no more think of bearing false witGess or making false statement under oath, than they would think of stealing a silver dollar pasted on the under side of the { lass of a show case by thieving shop keeper who likes to encourage his native talent in others" (Uriah always had way of drawing out his sentenceS.) For the very reason," he continued, that the oath with them answers the same purpose as the glass ou the case. Now the fact is, that while they stand In such awe of per jury, this very crime is one of the most difficult things in the world to commit. So much is this the case that 1 very much doubt whether there is a man in Tucson who has sufficient ability to encompass the commission of this crime To be sure there might be a case put up by the com bined legal talent of this district, in which perjury could be found to exist, but the effort required to make up such a case would involve the early decline of many of our best young lawyers. Per jury is by no means an every day affair And am going to startle you with die tum to the effect, that in the vast majori- ty of cases in which the ordinary portion of men swear to the truth, at great per sonal sacrifice most frequently, they could swear falsely with perfect impunity." growing warm, "I very nearly swear, every time I think or the loOseness and actual llegality of that one of the deca logue which says: 'ThOu shalt not bear