again, the ordinary case which I find mentioned in an anonymous letter in one of the morning papers, and which, I am informed, is so strongly illustrative of the caution exercised in all criminal cases where the judge is impartial, and where medical science must occasionally be fallible, that it needs no words of mine to add to its force. Its value is increased by this fact, that neither I nor any person connected with my family has the least knowledge of who the writer is, and, therefore, no considerations but those which do him honour can be supposed to operate on his mind. “To establish,” he says, “a perfect chain of circumstantial evidence, every circumstance in the case must be proved beyond all cavil. And the first and most important and absolutely indispensable circumstance in a case like that of Palmer’s is the fact of a murder having been committed. That is the groundwork of the circumstantial fabric, without which the rest of the edifice topples over. It is a circumstance of which merely the conduct, however suspicious, antecedent or subsequent to its occurrence, of the alleged murderer furnishes no valid proof. To convict a man of poisoning, you should distinctly trace the death of the deceased to poison. “Take a case in point. It is of frequent occurrence in this country that a woman is charged with the murder of her newly-born infant. She is unmarried; she is proved to have been suspected of pregnancy, and to have denied the fact; she is proved to have been recently delivered of a child; she has been seen going to a water-closet, and, after she has left, there are found, rammed down the pipe of that water-closet, the dissected members of an infant’s body; a knife smeared with blood is discovered hidden away, and traced to the prisoner’s possession; she has made no provision for the reception of the child, which, should it survive the moment of its birth, must prove an incubus upon its mother and a living witness to her shame. Here are circumstances of a damning nature. A strong motive, a cool premeditation, a mutilated body, and physical traces which cannot be mistaken. Mark the result. A surgeon is called at the trial, and states that he cannot positively swear that the child was born alive; that it may by possibility have been born dead; that there being no proof that the child was ever alive, he cannot be sure that it was killed by being cut in pieces. In that case there is no Professor Taylor, who, while the case was _pendente lite_, has written letters in a newspaper stating that ‘society demands a victim,’ and whose sworn testimony is to the effect that, inasmuch as 99 children in 100 are born alive, his solemn belief is that so was this child, and that he has therefore come to the conclusion that the cutting off of its head was the cause of death. There is no Chief Justice to tell the jury that they are to take all the circumstances surrounding the case into