These objections are urged in justification of the prejudice which exists; but the prejudice itself has been produced by other causes; and those causes are specious.The first, with respect to the educated classes of society, is a prejudice drawn from history, especially from that of the Roman emperors.The word informer at once recalls to the mind those detestable miscreants, the horror of all ages, whom even the pencil of Tacitus failed to cover with all the ignominy they deserved:
but these informers were not the executors of the law, they were the executors of the personal and lawless vengeance of the sovereign.
The second and most general cause of this prejudice is founded upon the employment given to informers by religious intolerance:
in the ages of ignorance and bigotry, barbarous laws having been enacted against those who did not profess the dominant religion, informers were then considered as zealous and orthodox believers; but in proportion to the increase of knowledge, the manners of men have been softened, and these laws having become odious, the informers, without whose services they would have fallen into disuse, partook of the hatred which the laws themselves inspired.It was an injustice in respect to them, but a salutory effect resulted from it, to the classes exposed to oppression.
These cases of tyranny excepted, the prejudice which condemns mercenary informers is an evil.It is a consequence of the inattention of the public to their true interests, and of the general ignorance in matters of legislation.Instead of acting in consonance with the dictates of the principle of utility ,people in general have blindly abandoned themselves to the guidance of sympathy and antipathy---of sympathy in favour of those who injure---of antipathy to those who render them essential service.If an informer deserves to be hated, a judge deserves to be abhorred.
This prejudice also partly springs from a confusion of ideas.No distinction is made between the judicial and the private informer;between the man who denounces a crime in a court of justice, and he who secretly insinuates accusations against his enemies; between the man who affords to the accused an opportunity of defending himself, and he who imposes the condition of silence with respect to his perfidious reports.
Clandestine accusations are justly considered as the bane of society: they destroy confidence, and produce irremediable evils; but they have nothing in common with judicial accusations.
It is extremely difficult to eradicate prejudices so deeply rooted and natural.From necessity, the practice of paying public informers continues to be in use; but the character of an informer is still regarded as disgraceful, and by some strange fatality the judges make no efforts to enlighten the public mind on this subject, and to protect this useful and even necessary class of men from the rigour of public opinion.
They ought not to suffer the eloquence of the bar to insult before their faces these necessary assistants in the administration of justice.The conduct of the English law towards informers furnishes a curious but deplorable instance of human frailty.It employs them, oftentimes deceives them, and always holds them up to contempt.
It is time for lawgivers at least to wean themselves from these schoolboy prejudices which can consist only with a gross inattention to the interests of the public, joined to a gross ignorance of the principles of human nature.They should settle with themselves once for all what it is they would have: they should strike, somehow or other, a balance between the benefit expected from the effects of a law, and the inconveniences, or supposed inconveniences, inseparable from its execution.If the inconveniences preponderate, let there be an end of the law; if the benefits, let there be an end of all obstacles which an aversion to the necessary instruments which its efficacy depends, would oppose to its execution.
