Instead of the work diminishing as we proceeded, it increased day by day, and week by week; one set of witnesses entailed the calling of another set.  The case grew in difficulty and extent.  It seemed absolutely endless and hopeless.

Within a few weeks of the start, a necessity arose for procuring the testimony of a witness from Australia, a matter of months; and the trial being a criminal one, the defendant was entitled to have the case for the prosecution concluded within a reasonable time.  If we had no evidence, it was to his advantage, and we had no right to detain him for a year while we were trying to obtain it.

However, the Australian evidence came in time.  Numbers of witnesses had to be called who not only were not in our brief, but were never dreamed of.  For instance, there was the Danish perjurer Louie, who swore he picked up the defendant at sea when the Bella went down.

Instead of this man going away after he had given his evidence, he remained until two gentlemen from the City, seeing his portrait in the Stereoscopic Company’s window in Regent Street, identified him as a dishonest servant of theirs, who was undergoing a sentence of penal servitude at the time he swore he picked Roger up.  He received five years’ penal servitude for his evidence.

I had pledged myself to the task, which extended over many months more than I ever anticipated.  At every sacrifice, however, I was bound to devote myself to the case, and did so, although I had to relinquish a very large portion of my professional income.

What made things worse, there was not only no effort made to curtail the business, but advantage was taken of every circumstance to prolong it.  The longer it was dragged out the better chance there was of an acquittal.  Had a juryman died after months of the trial had passed, the Government must have abandoned the prosecution.  It would have been impossible to commence again.  This was the last hope of the defence.

[The trial before Bovill ended at last, as it ought to have done months before, in a verdict for the defendants and the order for the prosecution of the Claimant for perjury.  It was this prosecution that occupied the attention of the court and of the world for 188 days, extending over portions of two years.

There is no doubt that Coleridge would a second time have deprived the country of Mr. Hawkins’s services, but higher influences than his prevailed, and the distinguished counsel was appointed to lead for the Crown, with Mr. Serjeant Parry as his leading junior.  It is not too much to say that no one knew the case so well as Mr. Hawkins, and none could have done it so well.  Bowen and Mathews were also his juniors.

The whole case, from the commencement of the Chancery proceedings down to the commencement of this trial, had been a comedy of blunders.  The very claim was an absurdity, every step in the great fraud was an absurdity, and every proceeding had some ridiculous absurdity to accompany it.  It was not until the cross-examination of Baigent by Mr. Hawkins that the undoubted truth began to appear.