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PRICE v. TYSON, 399
in controversy, either because the plaintiff cannot otherwise prove
the facts or in aid of proof. And hence the answer should, in all
cases, not only disclose the truth, kit the whole truth; It should
not only speak the truth in relation to a particular circumstance,
or part of the case; but the whole truth in regard to all the com-
ponent parts of that case which is the subject of litigation between
the parties. For, otherwise, if the plaintiff were allowed, by spe-
cial interrogatories, to cull from the defendants' knowledge of tile
whole matter in dispute only such particular facts as suited his pot-
pose; and the defendants were rigidly confined to the making of
only such answers as such interrogatories would warrant, the truth
of the case might be most grievously distorted and the whole
course of justice perverted. This as to a bill for relief as well
as discovery, is sufficiently evident.
The object of the discovery prayed by this bill is not, however,
to enable this court to give relief, but to aid a court of common
law in giving it. This plaintiff, it appears, can only obtain relief
from a court of common law according to the facts which he may
be able there to establish.
It is the duty of a court of justice to act only according to the
whole truth; it cannot allow any pertinent and legal testimony to
be withheld or garbled; and it is of no kind of consequence
whether the proofs are brought before it by means of its own pro-
cess, or by the help of any other tribunal, so they be competent,
credible, and pertinent.
This bill does, in effect, perform the office of a summons for
witnesses to attend and testify before the court by which the plain-
tiff's case is to be tried and determined. It collects evidence to
be used in that court, in like manner, as the testimony of wit-
nesses who may be brought before it, and sworn to speak the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Looking to the
general character of unreserved fulness and frankness, always ex-
pected from, and so commonly attributed to answers to bills in
Chancery; if these defendants were to stop short with a bare re-
sponse to the plaintiff's interrogatories, and fail to set forth, in
their answer, the matters necessary in any way to their defence at
law, it might, perhaps, be objected in the court of common law,
at if certainly might well be insisted upon here, on a hearing with
a view to relief, that they should be allowed to offer no proof in
relation to any defence which they had failed to rely upon in their
answer; upon the ground that when called on to shew their de-
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