Gilbert, Geoffrey. The Law of Evidence, with Notes and Additional References to Contemporary Writers and Later Cases, by James Sedgwick (Philadelphia: Jospeh Crukshank, 1805).
Existing Citations
best evidence (p. 3-4): The first, therefore, and most signal rule in relation to evidence, is this; that a man must have the utmost evidence the nature of the fact is capable of. For the design of the law is come to rigid demonstration in matters of right, and there can be no demonstration of a fact without the best evidence that the nature of the thing is capable of; less evidence doth create but opinion and surmise and does not leave a man the entire satisfaction that arises from demonstration; for if it be plainly seen in the nature of the transaction, that there is some more evidence that doth not appear, the very not producing it is a presumption that it would have detected something more than appears already, and therefore the mind does not acquiesce in any thing lower than the utmost evidence the fact is capable of Per Holt (†1602)
