31 - Crimes difficult to prove

Summary

To someone who does not take into account the fact that reason has almost never been the lawgiver to nations, it will seem strange, in view of these principles, that crimes which are the most serious or the most fantastical and strange, that is, which are the least likely to occur, come to be proved by guesses or by the weakest and least clearcut evidence. It is as if the laws and the judge had an interest not in the truth, but in getting a guilty verdict; as if the conviction of an innocent man were not a greater danger the more the likelihood of innocence outstrips the likelihood of guilt. Most men lack the energy that is as necessary for great crimes as it is for great virtue, from which it seems that the two go together in those countries which sustain themselves more by the activity of government and a passion for the public good, than by their size or the constant high quality of their laws. In the latter sort of country, weakened passions seem better suited to maintaining than to improving the form of government. And from this we draw the important conclusion that great crimes do not always show that a country is in decline.

There are some crimes which are at once common in society and difficult to prove. And in these cases, the difficulty of producing evidence indicates the probability of innocence.