’In the first place, such evidence requires peculiar sifting, which unfortunately cannot be applied to it in the present case, because it has been brought to us from a great distance.  Had the envelope been in our possession from the moment in which the accusation was first made, we might have tested it, either by sending it to Sydney or by obtaining from Sydney other letters or documents bearing the same stamp, affixed undoubtedly on the date here represented.  But that has not been within our power.  The gentlemen whom I shall bring before you will tell you that these impressions or stamps have a knack of verifying themselves, which makes it very dangerous indeed for fraudulent persons to tamper with them.  A stamp used in June will be hardly the same as it will be in July.  Some little bruise will have so altered a portion of the surface as to enable detection to be made with a microscope.  And the stamp used in 1870 will certainly have varied its form in 1871.  Now, I maintain that time and opportunity should have been given to us to verify this impression.  Copies of all impressions from day to day are kept in the Sydney post-office, and if it be found that on this day named, the 10th of May, no impression in the Sydney office is an exact facsimile of this impression then I say that this impression has been subsequently and fraudulently obtained, and that the only morsel of corroborative evidence offered to you will be shown to be false evidence.  We have been unable to get impressions of this date.  Opportunities have not been given to us.  But I do not hesitate to tell you that you should demand such opportunities before you accept that envelope as evidence on which you can send my client to jail, and deprive that young wife, whom he has made his own, of her husband, and afford the damning evidence of your verdict towards robbing his son of his legitimacy.’

He said very much more about the envelope, clearly showing his own appreciation of its importance and declaring again and again that if he could show that a stain of perjury affected the evidence in any one point all the evidence must fall to the ground, and that if there were ground to suspect that the envelope had been tampered with, then that stain of perjury would exist.  After that he went on to the four conspirators, as he called them, justifying the name by their acknowledged object of getting money from his client.  ’That they came to this country as conspirators, with a fraudulent purpose, my learned friend will not deny.’

‘I acknowledge nothing of the kind,’ said the learned friend.

’Then my learned friend must feel that his is a case in which he cannot safely acknowledge anything.  I do not doubt, gentlemen, but that you have made up your mind on that point.’  He went on to show that they clearly were conspirators;—­that they had confessed as much themselves.  ’It is no doubt possible that my client may have married this female conspirator, and she is not the less entitled