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 to protection from the
law because she is a conspirator. Nor, because she is a conspirator,
should he be less amenable to the law for the terrible injury he would
then have done to that other lady. But if they be conspirators,-