I now beg to call your attention to the next important fact in this case. It seems to me to be, though I touch upon it briefly here, one of the very last importance, and one which ought to decide it in the prisoner’s favour. The supposition of the Crown is, that Palmer intended to dose Cook with antimony, to keep his stomach in a perpetual state of vomiting, in order the more easily to despatch him by strychnia; that he began the plot on the Wednesday at Shrewsbury and continued it at Rugeley, and that during the Sunday Cook was under the influence of that treatment--Sunday was the day Palmer attempted, as was said, to force the broth upon him. Now, being bent, as it is supposed, upon destroying Cook, there is one man in the world who would be the very last witness he would select as a witness of his proceedings. He was a medical man, in the prime of life, intimately acquainted with Cook, living in the same house with him, much attached to him, at all events sufficiently attached to him to come to him as soon as he had heard that he had had an attack of diarrhœa--Mr. Jones, of Lutterworth. Palmer, intending to go to London, and not wishing to leave Cook alone, wrote on the Sunday to Mr. Jones, telling him that Cook was then ill with diarrhœa, a statement which is not altogether inconsistent with the evidence of Dr. Bamford and what Cook stated, and begs of him to come over. I beg of you to pause here for a moment in order to appreciate the full importance of this fact; the more you think of it the more profound will be your conviction that it affords evidence irrefragable of Palmer’s innocence. The imputation upon Palmer is that he intended to kill Cook to possess himself of his winnings. Who was with Cook when the race was won? Who was by his side on Shrewsbury racecourse for the three minutes that he was speechless? Who saw him take out his betting-book and count his winnings? Who but Jones--Jones who was his bosom friend, his companion, his confidant, and who knew to the last farthing the amount of his gains? Jones was, of all men living, the most likely to be the recipient of Cook’s confidence, and the man bound by every consideration of honour, friendship, and affection to protect him, to vindicate his cause, and to avenge his death. Yet this was the man for whom Palmer sent, that he might converse with Cook, receive his confidence, minister to him in his illness, and even sleep in the same room with him! How, if Palmer is the murderer they represent him, are you to account for his summoning Jones to the bedside of the sick man? If Cook really suspected--as we are assured he did--that Palmer was poisoning him, Jones was the man to whom he would most willingly have unbosomed himself, and in whose faithful ear he would have most eagerly disburthened the perilous stuff that weighed upon his own brain. Jones, as well as Palmer, was a medical man, and it is not improbable that, in the course of his studies, the former may have noted