The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-28 00:00:00

THE SUN; LONDON; WEDNESDAY EVENING; MAY 28, 1856.

death, showing himself to be very " flush of cash,"
as it is termed. It is also found that a betting-

book, which the deceased had in his possession a
short time before, vanishes under very sus-

picious circumstances, while the suspected party
causes the bets which the other had won to be
collected on the settling day, and applied for his
own exclusive benefit. Nor are these all the
damning features of the case. Certain bills of
exchange, which had been discounted by PALMER,
and some of which are supposed not to be genuine,
would speedily arrive at maturity, so that they

could not be kept from COOK'S knowledge ; while
a document was prepared, which a party was re-

quested fraudulently to witness as being executed
by COOK, declaring that all the proceeds thereof

had been obtained for COOK'S use, and that he

was therefore primarily responsible for these lia-
bilities, amounting to 4,0001. sterling. A cheque,
too, which there was reason to believe had been
forged by PALMER in the name of COOK, on

, -
-le Messrs. WEATHERBY—a discovery whereof

would be fatal to PALMER. He had
also proved himself an adept in forgery,
for bills to a large amount, purporting to bear

his mother's acceptance, were in circulation. He
had, therefore, the strongest possible motives for
obtaining money within a few hours' notice,

which was essential to prevent him from appear-
ing as a felon in the dock for an offence only less
serious than that of which he was subsequently

accused. He obtained money, which was not
accounted for in any other way than the plunder
of the man whom he professed to regard as a dear
friend. Here, then, was abundant motive for the
offence to a person wholly indifferent to moral
considerations, and the first groat link in the
chain of overwhelming circumstances against the
accused is completed.
It is then found that PA.LMER. had purchased
strychnine in two separate places, and was there-
, fore in possession of the deadly instrument that
might have produced the death. He had, in one
place, three grains ou Monday evening. The
same night COOK sustained a severe attack, such as
would have occurred after a severe, although
not fatal, dose. There might have been
impurities that retarded the full effect intended.
The following morning a double dose is procured
at a different place. Pills are again forced on the
unfortunate victim the same evening by his medi-
cal adviser and friend. This time " the drugs
are sure." COOK dies in intense agony, while
PI4,IIER looks coolly on, being ready to witness
the result at a moment's notice. Antimony was
traced in the body, which must have been ad-
ministered shortly within 48 hours of
death. PALMER, as a medical man, had
in his possession the drug of which he was more
than suspected to have made fearful use on other
occasions. And there was a motive for its use to
get COOK to Rugeley, in place of letting him go
to London, where he might have received his
own winnings, and the opportunity for his mur-
der would have been lost ; while his death before
Monday would have defeated PALMBR'S supposed
' object of obtaining the money and applying it to

his own use.
The next link was the conduct of the accused
after the event. We find him interfering with
the post mortem, examination, offering a bribe to
the post-boy to upset the carriage and break the
jar, tampering with the Coroner who held the
inquest, and with the Postmaster, so as to obtain
surreptitiously knowledge of the private comm 1-
nication from Dr. TAYLOR to the attorney acting
on behalf of the next of kin of the deceased. None
of them taken separately might be sufficient to fix
the guilt on PAL3fEIt, but, combined with the
other circumstances, they added enormously to
the weight of the evidence, and seemed perfectly
inconsistent with innocence.

From these various matters it became clear
as light That, if the deceased died by poison,
PALMER'S was the hand by which it was adminis
tered, and with the cool and deliberate intention
of producing the fatal results that followed. There
was-Ist, the motive for the crime ; 2d, the pos-
session of the means by which it might be effected ;
and 3dly, the subsequent conduct of the accused,
in acting as a guilty man might be supposed to
act, and as no innocent one would have for a
moment contemplated. But more was re-
quired to bring home the guilt. It was
also necessary to show that the death was
occasioned by poison, or, at least, that every symp-
tom was consistent with the supposition that
poison had been administered at the times and
under the circumstances allege), by the proseca-

don.

IA us.

That doctors differ is certain, and the adage
received a further illustration during the late trial.
We do not for a moment impute a desire or in-
tention to give false testimony to any of
the professional witnesses on either side.
But it seems as if some of the num-
ber conducted their experiments in the spirit of
the partisan rather than in that of the strictly
impartial and indifferent witness, whose sole
object was to elicit truth, and to advance the
cause of justice. The difficulty of this
part of the case was materially enhanced
by the failure to trace the poison ; but that
failure might have occurred in the bast-conducted
experiments, to say nothing of any mistake in the
tests administered. It was not sufficient to repel
the terrible presumptions arising from the other
links in the chaia of evidence, or the agreement
of the symptoms with those which would have
followed the administration of strychnine. Under
all the circumstances of the case no reasonable
doubt could be entertained that Witeaan PALMER
was a wilful and deliberate murderer, under cir-
cumstances of peculiar atrocity, such as, thank
GOD, are seldom brought to light in a court of
justice, and which have scarcely been paralleled
since the time of the BORGIA&
Everything was done to obtain an impartial
trial. A special Act of Parliament was passed to
permit of the venue being changed from the
county, where great excitement prevailed on the
subject, to the Central Criminal Court.' Money
was lavishly supplied to obtain the very highest
professional assistance—legal and medical—as
advocates and witnesses, with possibly a little
too much mixing up of the characters.
Perhaps no case ever exhibited greater evi-
dence of that strict impartiality—perhaps,
might say, leaning to the side of the accused,
of which,
the one Englishmen, we are proud—than
under notice, the result whereof has been
to leave WILLIAM PALMER a convicted criminal,
about to expiate his enormous guilt by a painful
and ignominious death on the scaffold. The
gradations of guilt have
beena closelye
liabilities—the
debtor,
pursued—
the e —t
the gambler became the fraudulent
aln
out means of liquidating his
the wilful and
debtor the forger—and the forger
deliberate muderer—Nemo repente hat tu, rpissi -

What are we to illuminate for ? The oftener
the question has been asked the further oft has
seemed the solution. Of old, Englishmen illumi-
nated because they had achieved what they fought
fir, and had glorious trophies of war to suspend in
the Temple of Peace. Our readers are but too
well aware the country has not got what it fought