Servants are not answerable for honest error of judgment

[This is from my New Orleans batture pamphlet, dated February 25, 1812. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.]

The wise know their weakness too well to assume infallibility; and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows. The vine and the fig-tree must withdraw, and the briar and bramble assume their places. But this is not the spirit of our law. It expects not impossibilities. It has consecrated the principle that its servants are not answerable for honest error of judgment.

He who has done this duty honestly, and according to his best skill and judgment, stands acquitted before God and man. If indeed a judge goes against law so grossly, so palpably as no imputable degree of folly can account for, and nothing but corruption, malice or wilful wrong can explain, and especially if circumstances prove such motives, he may be punished for the corruption, the malice, the wilful wrong; but not for the error: nor is he liable to action by the party grieved. And our form of government constituting its respective functionaries judges of the law which is to guide their decisions, places all within the same reason, under the safeguard of the same rule.