Wednesday 27 March 2013

27th March 1813: The Leeds Mercury publishes an editorial about 'an Attentive Hearer'

It must be admitted on all hands that an Attentive Hearer "dies game," or after the figure he has already cut, he would never have written another letter of half column, turning upon a mere verbal quibble—a distinction without a difference. If he he not extremely ignorant of the nature of evidence, he must know that the testimony of witnesses speaking "according to the best of their knowledge and belief" is regularly received in our courts of justice. Indeed knowledge and belief are the only grounds on which a man can with certainty aver any thing. Will his authorities say that his assertions are true according to the best of their knowledge and belief? He knows they will not. But it is vain to reason with a man who has lost both his cause and his temper, and who is now evidently contending not for truth, but for the last word. The public have long been convinced that he is in error, and if any thing would have fixed upon his own mind the same conviction, it would have been the fact of his having produced, with no small difficulty, five witnesses to support his dogmatical assertions, three of whom contradicts one half of what he says! a fourth could not distinctly hear!! and the fifth was not present!!!

This is from the Leeds Mercury of 27th march 1813.

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