Odger's English Common Law

Chapter VI.
OFFENCES AGAINST THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
It is of national importance that the administration of
justice in our law Courts should be pure and unsullied, free
from all suspicion of bias or prejudice, firm and impartial in
the strict administration of law to persons of all classes alike.
Legal proceedings must not be made the instrument of
extortion or oppression, nor must the Courts be misled by
perjury or fraud. Their decrees, when once pronounced, must
be effective and rigidly enforced by the strong arm of the law.
"We will examine first the precautions which are taken
with the object of securing that all evidence given in our law
Courts shall be true.
False Evidence.
If any person who has been lawfully sworn as a witness or
as an interpreter in a judicial proceeding wilfully makes a
statement material in that proceeding, which he knows to be
false or does not believe to be true, he is guilty of perjury.
This offence seems not to have been treated as a crime till the
year 1613. It is now a statutory misdemeanour, punishable
with seven years' penal servitude. 1
in detail on pp. 195 et seq.
This crime is dealt with
Subornation of perjury was made penal before perjury
itself—namely in 1540. It consists in hiring or procuring
another person to make a false statement on oath under uuch
circumstances as would constitute perjury in the suborner.
To amount to subornation the oath must be in fact taken and
the false statement actually made : otherwise the would-be
suborner is guilty only of inciting.
"Every person, who aids, abets, counsels, procures or
suborns another person to commit an offence against this Act,
B.C.L.
» Perjury Ac\ 1911 (1 & 2 Geo. V. c. 6), s. 1 (1).
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