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...the Court of Justice is embarrassed by difficulties of a kind unknown at home. Not the least of these is due to the general untrustworthiness of Chinese witnesses. Experience has shown that when occasion requires, perjury is regarded rather in the light of a duty than as a moral offence by all classes of the people. And the motives which inspire a tale of falsehood are often so obscure or insufficient according to our ideas that it oftentimes gains credence from the apparent want of object to tell an untruth.
That most valuable kind of intelligence which springs from experience and a perception of presumptions and probabilities, which an English Jury is enabled to apply to the case of an English prisoner, can be brought to bear only in a very different degree upon the trial of a Chinaman, and the truth of a well-told story, such as most Chinese can easily manufacture, is wanting. If, therefore, lamentable failures of Justice sometimes occur in this Colony under our mixed system of Criminal procedure, it is not to be wondered at. To enable any Judge or Magistrate to reach the truth in any given case with a reasonable degree of certainty, I consider