interest, no sensible man would believe that he deliberately plotted and committed the murder. A long correspondence has been put in, the material parts of which letters will, in a subsequent stage of the case, be called to your attention. There is evidently a great deal in it that does not touch the point in the case, but the learned judge, before the end of the case, will direct your mind to a correct appreciation of the contents. I watched them with an anxiety which no words can express. Having had the advantage, for which I shall ever honour my learned friend, of reading the correspondence beforehand, I found the history, as told by the correspondence, filled up by the _vivâ voce_ testimony which was afterwards given. I was aware, at least I firmly believed, that in that correspondence the innocence of the prisoner lay concealed; and I think that I shall be able to show you that it is demonstrative of this proposition that he not only had no motive to kill Cook, but that the death of Cook was the very worst kind of thing that could happen for him. I shall not apologise to you, you would think it very inopportune to do so, for going into the details of this matter. Allow me, confining myself, as it is my duty, to the evidence in the cause, to call your attention to the position in which these two men stood to each other. They had been intimate as racing friends for two or three years; they had had a great many transactions together; they were jointly interested in at least one racehorse which was training at the stables of Saunders at Hednesford; they generally stayed together at the same hotel; they were seen together on almost all the racecourses in the kingdom, and were known to be connected in betting transactions, and adventurers upon the same horses at the same races. It is in evidence that just before Cook’s death he said, in the presence of his friend Jones, addressing Palmer, “Palmer, we have lost a great deal of money upon races this year.” And though it is impossible, Cook being dead, and the mouth of the prisoner sealed, and transactions of this character not being recorded in regular books as the transactions in a merchant’s counting-house are, to give you in the fulness of evidence the actual state of their relations to each other, yet it is abundantly clear, and I will make it more clear to you presently, that they were very closely connected. When, in the month of May, 1855, money was wanted either by Mr. Cook or Palmer, Palmer applied to Pratt for it. He wanted, I think, £200 to make up a sum for the payment of a debt, he having, I think, a balance of £190 in the hands of Pratt. Mr. Pratt would not lend it him without security, and he proposed the security of his friend John Parsons Cook, a gentleman of respectability and a man of substance. [Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]