the attestation of the Archbishop, were both Irish blunders. "And on such evidence," said Mr Robertson, "this bungled excerpt is to be held proved to be a deliberate forgery!"[32] Before leaving this part of the case, let us remind the reader of the fact mentioned in our former Number, that it was Mr Thomas Christopher Banks who, according to his own letter, discovered this challenged "excerpt" in Ireland, and transmitted it to the prisoner; that the prisoner's council elicited at the trial that this Mr Thomas Christopher Banks had been seen, by a witness, alive, at Edinburgh, _a few weeks before the trial, and at the office of the Crown Solicitor_; and that Mr Banks was not called as a witness by either side. [32] _Ante_, p. 470. Was then this "excerpt charter" a forgery, or a genuine document? The reader has before him the same materials for forming a judgment which were presented to the Edinburgh jury. Let us proceed now to-- II. THE LE NORMAND PACKET--_i. e._, THE FRENCH EVIDENCE. It now lies before us, in the large _facsimile_, nearly a yard square, (one prepared for use at the trial,) prefixed to Mr Swinton's Report, representing eight different inscriptions or indorsements, on the back of an old French map of Canada. Six of them are written on the paper itself of the map, and two on two other pieces of paper, which were afterwards pasted on the back of the map. We beg to repeat emphatically the observation made in our last Number,[33] that "we doubt whether such an extraordinary document, or series of documents, as this map, with its accompaniments, has ever, before or since, challenged deliberate judicial investigation." It is at once fearful and ludicrous to regard these documents as forgeries, _expected by their fabricators to be received as genuine_, and intrepidly submitted to competent scrutiny. So, at least, we own it would have appeared to ourselves; but, after all, there is nothing like a jury for deciding upon conflicting testimony. We cordially concur in the following admirable observations of Lord Brougham, delivered on a very important occasion, when he was sitting as Lord Chancellor,[34]--"The best tribunal for investigating contested facts is a jury [of twelve men] of various habits of thinking, of various characters of understanding, of various kinds of feeling, of moral feeling--all of which circumstances enter deeply into the capacity of such individuals.... The diversity of the minds of the jury, even if they are taken without any experience as jurors, their various habits of thinking and feeling, and their diversity of cast of understanding, and their discussing the matter among themselves, and the very fact of their not being lawyers, their not being professional men, and believing as men believe, and _acting_ on their belief, in the ordinary affairs of life, give them a capacity of aiding the court in their eliciting of truth, which no single judge, be he ever so largely gifted with mental endowments, be he