The foregoing paper containing instructions to Buckhurst, the outcome of this plot, we shall proceed to analyse. For audacity and unblushing falsehood it is almost without precedent. It proceeds on the assumption that the duplicity of the writer would not be found out, and we have no evidence that during her lifetime, or for long after, it was found out. The first paragraph takes us back to the beginning of Mary's captivity, and considering the length of that captivity and the treatment Mary experienced, the paragraph and its charges may be regarded as sheer imagination, to which the innocence of Mary has given the lie. The second paragraph requires Buckhurst to explain the cause of his mission, the entire responsibility of which Elizabeth put on the shoulders of her lords and commissioners, who, she says, gave sentence against Mary unanimously! This almost takes away one's breath. The reader will take note that the sentence was written out by Elizabeth, handed by her to her ministers with a command to make it their finding notwithstanding Mary's guilt or innocence. No one dared to offer a word against it, or in short to have any opinion of his own; otherwise it might have cost him his life. As regards Nau and Curie, their evidence was obtained by the rack, and is of no value. The third paragraph orders the execution, with the hypocritical reasons which led to it, in all of which the wish is father to the thought, and plainly indicates the mind of Elizabeth. The conspiracy trick was an excellent trump card for such a woman to play against Mary, and by that means get quit of a rival whom of all the women in the world she knew to be superior to herself in every accomplishment. No woman could frequent the court of Elizabeth who was superior to her in these respects. We have a proof of this in the famous interview between her and Sir James Melville in 1564, when Melville's ingenuity was taxed to the uttermost to acknowledge Elizabeth's accomplishments against his will. The fourth paragraph may be considered as perjury and hypocrisy and a repetition of the unblushing falsehoods already expressed. The fifth paragraph doubtless was intended to convey to Mary some idea of the saintly conduct of Elizabeth and the wicked conduct of Mary, which reminds us of the Pharisee in the Hebrew story. The commissioners were to let her know “how much in respect of her degree, calling, and nearness in blood to us, have moved us to take the course we have done in sending our chief nobility to try her case.” Whether this sentimental and insulting message was conveyed to Mary is not recorded, but the probability is it was not. The sixth paragraph is an “instruction” to the captive that as she has no case she is not to abuse the plaintiff. If she attempted to justify herself before the commissioners she was to be told what was equivalent to an insult: “how much she is to blame to wrong us in honour with her unjust and untrue assertions.” This was before any