yed for no other intent or purpose
but to cut off the King of England;' and that he had given money that 'the
four Irish ruffians,' who were to kill the king at Windsor, might be
speedy in their business.

In all these trials there is nothing that more strikingly shows the
infamous manner in which these witnesses were allowed to testify, than the
withholding of such parts of their evidence as they pretended it was
improper at that time to bring forward. Thus they protected themselves;
for no one durst accuse them lest he himself should be charged as a party
to the conspiracy. At this trial Oates said, without a word of dissent
from the Chief Justice, 'I could give other evidence but will not, because
of other things which are not fit to be known yet.'

It is impossible that the Chief Justice, or the other judges, should have
believed such a story as this even for a moment. We make all necessary
allowance for the influence of great popular excitement. We know that
judges are but men, and are not exempt more than other men from the
contagion of those occasional outbursts of frenzy, which seem to destroy
all individual independence, and all sense of individual responsibility;
and which for a time makes a nation like a herd of maddened buffaloes,
ignorant whither it is going, but unable to stop in its furious career.
Yet by their position judges are, of all classes of men, the farthest
removed from popular influences of this nature. Their habits of legal
investigation, fit them in an eminent degree to weigh with scrupulous
accuracy the characters of witnesses; to detect improbabilities and
contradictions. Stories that may deceive even intelligent men unacquainted
with the laws of evidence, and the bearings of testimony, stand revealed
at first glance to the practised eye of the judge as a tissue of
falsehoods. Here the judges could not have been deceived. Who could
believe that the Jesuits, a body of men not less celebrated for their
profound knowledge of the politics of every kingdom in Christendom, than
for the wisdom with which they adapted their plans of proselytism to the
changing circumstances of the times, should have formed a plan to restore
popery in England by massacre and conquest? The thing is too preposterous
to merit a moment's attention.

Still more ridiculous are the details of the Plot as disclosed by Oates.
Would the Jesuits, even if they had formed such plans, confide them to a
penniless, friendless vag