“With regard to the general charge of untruthfulness, I have said that nobody has yet attempted to specify any particular untruth expressed or implied in the Government Declaration. And it is singular that Mr Jardine himself does not form an exception; for though he does specify, as contradicted by one of the omitted passages, a particular statement which he _assumes_ to be contained in the Declaration, it is certain that there is no such statement there; but that, on the contrary, the precise import of that passage, as Mr Jardine himself infers it, is represented in the body of the narrative with delicate exactness. In the absence of such specification, I can only oppose to the general charge a general expression of my own conviction; which is, that the narrative put forth by the Government was meant to be, and was by its authors believed to be, a narrative strictly and scrupulously veracious. It is true that it was written under the excitement and agitation of that last and most portentous disclosure, which, in proving that Essex had been capable of designs far worse than anybody had suspected him of, suggested a new explanation of all that had been most suspicious and mysterious in his previous proceedings; and it may be that things which before had been rejected as incredible were now too easily believed. In so dark a thing as treason it is impossible to have positive evidence at every step. Many passages must remain obscure, and fairly open to more interpretations than one; and in one or two of those points which are and profess to be ‘matter of inference or presumption,’ as distinguished from ‘matter of plain and direct proof,’ there is room, probably, without setting aside such indisputable facts, for an interpretation of Essex’s conduct more favourable than that adopted by the Queen and her councillors.... In my own account of the matter I have abstained, in deference to so general a prejudice, from using the Declaration as an authority; and have assumed as a fact nothing for which I cannot quote evidence independent of it. For the rest, I shall let it speak for itself. It will be found to be a very luminous and coherent narrative, and certainly much nearer the truth than any which has been put forth since it became the fashion to treat it as a fiction.”