II. The prisoner's counsel made an ingenious, eloquent, and judicious address--very brief, and directed vigorously and steadily towards the strong parts of the defence, and leaving untouched the formidable points arising out of the prisoner's correspondence with Mademoiselle Le Normand, and the conflicting accounts of his movements and transactions given in his judicial examinations. All the forgeries are charged on, or supposed to be, the act of _one man_--the prisoner; yet not only does no single witness trace the faintest resemblance, in any of the alleged forgeries, to the handwriting of the prisoner, or Mademoiselle Le Normand, but an able witness for the Crown, Mr Lizars, negatives such a fact. Well might the prisoner be deceived--if the documents _were_ forgeries--when his counsel, his agents--the Lord Advocate, and the Judge Ordinary, every one concerned during the ten years' litigation--was so deceived, and never once suspected it. Why did not the Crown produce Mademoiselle le Normand? And as to the purchase of the old map of Canada from Leguix, on the Quai Voltaire, he explicitly stated that the prisoner was _not_ the man! But there was no evidence of the forgery, and therefore the guilty knowledge, using, and uttering, fell to the ground. If even there were doubts on the subject, the prisoner was clearly entitled to the benefit of them: his character "was everything;" for he had received as high as man could give. In an early part of his address, Mr Robertson averred that he saw in the countenances of the jury "the cheering light of an acquittal--so that he could almost stop _there_;" and his last sentence was one which would be deemed highly objectionable on the part of counsel, under such circumstances, in England--"_On my conscience I believe him innocent of the crimes here charged_, and to have been merely the dupe of the designing, and the prey of the unworthy!"[54] So solemn an expression of belief could not, of course, have been made by a gentleman if he were not sincere; but it is certainly not a part of the duty of counsel to make such protestations; and in doing so he trespasses beyond his province upon that of others, and that one the confines of which ought to be most jealously and sacredly guarded--we mean the province of the witness, and that of the jury. Bating a little wilful blindness to ugly facts, which is occasionally to be found elsewhere than in Scotland, the address of Mr Robertson was as fair as can be expected from a prisoner's advocate, and calculated to make a strong impression upon the jury. [54] Swinton, p. 333-4. III. Lord Meadowbank's summing up was long and elaborate: stern and uncompromising from first to last in the expression of a very hostile view of the whole case, as against the prisoner, but still never straining the proved facts. It is the charge of an upright yet severe judge, not ambitious of replying to the prisoner's counsel, but vigorously expressing his own conscientious opinions.