Though perceiving the meagerness and improbability of Hutchinson's solution, Upham, ignoring what he avowed to be the only historical "clew we have" to a correct one, which led directly to the woman's own wit, was pleased to find the exciting cause of her persecution not in _her_, but in other people, and dogmatically said, "The _truth_ is, the tongue of slander was let loose against her." Such assumption--and it is bold assumption, even if it be in accordance with facts--fails--entirely fails--to meet the fair demands of our common-sense requirements. What started, and extended, and intensified that tongue if it did wag? If its utterances were _slanderous_, they were a mixture of _falsehood_ and _malice_. What _lies_ were or could be fabricated against such a woman, the nature of which the common sagacity of society there and then would not detect? What _lies_ which the truthfulness of society there and then would not decline to repeat against her? What malice against that lady of high connections could so pervade society there as to generate a public sentiment that demanded and obtained her life? The people of Boston were not wicked enough to let falsehood and malice triumph in their highest court of justice. Something different from _slander_ was needed to awaken and sustain the popular clamor against this woman, and to cause the court to pass sentence of death upon her. We granted to Upham the faculties of a fictionist, and he used them when he declared that "the truth is, the tongue of slander was let loose upon her." "The truth is," neither he nor any other one among us at this day, knows whether that woman was slandered or not. She may have been, but it is only matter of conjecture, and should not be put forth as _truth_. Something more than slander in its utmost expandings and accretions was needful to the tragic results which ensued.