As all degrees are here included, it is sometimes said that there are no degrees of secondary evidence. This must not be misunderstood to mean that all secondary evidence is entitled to be received as of the same degree of credibility. For a further, and in some respects parallel, distinction to that lastly taken, arises as the speech is or is not deliberate, the writing authenticated, the conduct reasoned. And in every case partiality, bias, and prejudice are grounds not to be neglected in the ascertainment of accuracy and trustworthiness. So far as regards the nature or proximity of the relation, evidence is either direct and immediate, or indirect and mediate, called circumstantial; as concerned rather with the surrounding circumstances leading to the proof of the presumed truth of a fact than with the fact itself. Direct Evidence comprises those facts from which, if proved, the truth of the proposition, statement, or conclusion necessarily follows. Circumstantial Evidence comprises those facts from which again may be inferred facts, whence the truth of the proposition, statement, or conclusion must necessarily follow. This inferential method is especially involved in Circumstantial Evidence. In all evidence there is a presumption open more or less to rebuttal, and evidence on this account is qualified as, _e.g._, _primâ facie_, conclusive. In Direct Evidence there is the presumption of the truth of the proposition, statement, or conclusion from the proven facts. In Circumstantial Evidence there is first an inference of directly connected facts, otherwise unknown or unevidenced from remotely connected facts, known or given in evidence; then there is further a presumption of the truth of the proposition, statement, or conclusion from these mediately established facts. APPENDIX B. DISCREPANCY AS TO DATE WHEN NOT MATERIAL TO ISSUE, NO DISPROOF OF TRUTH OF THE REST OF THE ASSERTION. The above doctrine of the law of Evidence applies, of course, to whatever may be the nature or purpose of the Inquiry, whether conducted in a Court of Law, in the library of the historical scholar, or elsewhere. The principle was soundly stated at the trial of “the Venerable” Martyrs, Fathers Whitbread, Harcourt, Fenwick, Gavan, and Turner, at the Old Bailey, by Sir William Scroggs, Knt., the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, on the occasion of the Popish Plot Trials, in the year 1679. “If it should be a _mistake only in point of time_, it destroys not the evidence, _unless you think it necessary to the substance of the thing_.