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

Spirit of the Public Journals.

THE. TRIAL OF PALMER.
(Front the Morning Post of this day.)

That remarkable trial has now come to a close
by which, for the 13 last days, so much of human
ability has been employed—on which so much of
justice and fairness has been shown to the wretched
man accused, and at last convicted, of the deepest
of crimes against society. There cannot be a sha-
dow of reason for the morbid cry that Palmer was
sacrificed to a. panic or to a prejudice. Everything
that could be done in order that his trial might be
a fair one was done. The place where he was tried
was removed from Stafford to London,- because it
was said that popular feeling ran so high in the
former place as to make a just verdict difficult, if
not impossible. The time was adjourned until the
minds of men should have had time to cool. He
had the ablest counsel to defend, the best judges
to try, him—a jury as free from all suspicion of
prejudice as could be obtained. The case against
the prisoner was stated by the Attorney-General
in one of the clearest, the most calm, and, at the
same time, in one of the strongest speeches that we
ever heard. It was a speech which addressed itself
to the reason, of the jury. It left their passions
untouched. No worn-out clap-trap of sentimen-
talism was used to rouse their feelings. It dealt
with evidence and with facts ; and it put these so
logically—in so broad and clear a light—before
those who had to judge them, as to leave a hard
task indeed for the defence. There can be no
doubt that that defence was conducted with the
utmost skill, with the greatest ingenuity, with the
strongest attempt at success of which the case ad-
mitted. It failed, as the most eloquent defence
must have failed, before the facts of the case, though
the question had been tried at 50 different times
by 50 distinct juries.
We have carefully abstained, while the issue was
doubtful, from a word that might affect it—we have
refrained from the shadow of a comment on the
conduct of the prisoner on any circumstance, trivial
or momentous, that might influence opinionson the
subject so momentous to him if he were innocent,
so momentous to society and to justice if lie were
guilty. We may now fairly and openly, with all
the evidence before us, express our concurrence in
the verdict of the jury ; we may congratulate them
on having done their painful duty well and fear-
lessly. In all cases of poisoning there comes the
main difficulty that much of the evidence must be
circumstantial. The weapon which the murderer
used is not nigh at hand. That bloody witness
cannot be traced to his possession. He is not driven
to ghastly expedients to get rid of the body of his
victim. He has no clothes stained with the proofs
of his crime which testify against him. There is
nothing to convict him but the strong chain of cir-
cumstances ably linked together—the character,
the motive, the opportunity for the deed—the evi-
dence that he used that opportunityt—the testi-
mony of events before and after the death. In
Palmer's case all these combined so strongly as to
leave no possible escape from the facts even to the
utmost ingenuity. The only point on which the
defence could set up the shadow, of a case was on
the fact that strychnine was not found in the body,
or the inference thence drawn that the deceased
did not die from poison at all—that he died solely
from convulsions, produced by natural causes.
Medical evidence was, as usual, produced in abun-
dance on this side of the question. It had the
natural effect of opinions pushed so far a 3 to be-
come absurd. No jury could believe that a man in
perfect health should suddenly become the victim
of symptoms such as could not be proved to have
occurred except from strychnine ; unless lie had
taken strychnine no jury could believe, in the face
of the opinions given to them, in the existence of
those symptoms from any other cause, when the
strongest witnesses for the defence could only bring
forward something like them in constitutions
strangely and singularly reduced.
No set of men could in fact come to any conclu-
sion, from the facts before them, but that Cook
died from strychnine—that poison was traced to the
possession of Palmer. In two cases he was proved to
have bought it immediately before the remarkable
death of the deceased. No attempt was made by
the defence to account for this purchase, or to state
what he did with the poison. The motive for the
use of it, of which he has been convicted after the
most patient and careful investigation, was unhap-
pily but too apparent even for the ingenuity of Ser-
geant Shee to conceal or distort. There was the
amplest opportunity for the commission of the
crime. There was the most extraordinary coinci-
dence between the death of Cook and the presence
of Palmer. There was proof of his'having broken
the law in one serious particular, at least under the
pressure of circumstances. Of what other crimes
he has been guilty rests between him and his God.
Human justice has done its part in the long and
patient investigation which has just been brought
to a satisfactory close. The law has shown its su-
periority over the most deliberate and the best de-
vised appliance of the resources of crime. It is, to
our thinking, a very happy thing that this is so.
Had Palmer not been convicted, public opinion
would still have found a verdict of guilty against
him. It would have shakeh the confidence of the
world in the power of justice—it would have given
strength to the bad man—it would have increased
the temptation to the most diabolical of crimes—it
would have stood as the record of the success of
villany the most deliberate and atrocious, assuming
the shape most terrible to man—it would have been
the triumph of a crime which the boldest of us may
well shrink from for its smooth, secret, and silent
course. Justice was fairly matched against murder,
and has fairly won its stern victory. In this coun-
try we do not bring the whole power of the
law to bear against the defenceless prisoner. We
give him every opportunity to make good his
case. Every point that will tell in his favour
is put forward by his counsel. The judge sums
up the evidence for both sides fairly and
calmly. He points out to the jury the strength and
the weakness of either. If, after so steady and
solemn an inquiry, there comes at last the verdict
of Guilty, we may well be convinced of its truth—
we may well concur, as we do in Palmer's case, in
the deliberate and unanimous opinion of the three
judges that he committed the crime laid to his
charge.

( From the Daily News.)
After a trial of unexampled duration, conducted
with singular ability, the most impartial fairness,
and the most exemplary patience, William Palmer
has been found guilty by the just judgment of his
country. The verdict by which he has been thus
branded as one of the most odious and execrable of
felons must long since have been anticipated by all
those who have attentively watched the progress of
this most remarkable investigation. It was impos-
sible to read the lucid and masterly address with
which the Attorney-General opened the case for the
prosecution without feeling that if the evidence at
all came up to the statement the prisoner at the
bar was a doomed man. The evidence did come up
to the statement. In the six days occupied by the
case for the prosecution there was not a single ma-
terial witness who broke down, not a single mate-
rial point which was•not made out. As the long
detail of proof evolved itself, it was curious to watch
how each fact seemed to fall into its proper place,
till link by link there was substantiated in evidence
that chain of circumstantial narrative which the
skill of the great advocate had already wound in
deadly, but polished, folds round the culprit's neck.
The case for the prosecution was altogether admi-
rably got up. The interests of truth and society
were in good hands. It is fortunate, indeed, that
it was so. Had a single weak point been left—had
there been any gap in the evidence—any break in
that continuity of circumstances, each in itself un-
important, but in their aggregate effect overwhelm-
ing—instant advantage would have been taken of
it by the counsel for the defence, and instead of
rejoicing, as we now do, at the just doom by which
this unparalleled offender has been overtaken, we
should have had, in all probability, to submit to the
scandal and the misfortune of witnessing his escape.
In a case of such absorbing interest we may safely
conclude that the generality of our readers have
made themselves acquainted with the evidence, as
it has day after day been recorded in our columns.
On the present occasion we shall only glance at a
few of the more salient points. The case for the
prosecution was, that Palmer had an interest in
Cook's death ; that he first practised on him by
antimony, and finally poisoned him by strychnia ;
that all the symptoms under which Cook died were
referable to poisoning by strvchnia, and to nothing
else ; while the admitted failure to discover any
traces of strychnia in the body after death was not
in itself incompatible with guilt, and was utterly
nugatory as a defence in the face of all the proved
facts of the case. The defence took issue on all
these points—but principally relied on the absence
of motive, and the non-discovery of poison in the
dead body. Neither of these grounds, though both
were urged with considerable ingenuity and confi-
dence, could give rise for a moment to any reason-
able doubt. As to motive, it was abundant. On
this point it is only necessary to' recall the facts of
Palmer's position on Tuesday, the 13th of Novem-
ber, when Cook's horse, Polestar, won the Shrews-
bury Handicap. He had long been in difficulties.
For two years his normal state had been that of a
man who is paying constantly increasing losses by
perpetually accumulating loans. His book was al
most uniformly ill made up. He had repeatedly
raised money at 60 per cent. on the security of life
policies and forged acceptances. In 1854 he had
just managed to clear himself by what no one, we
suppose, will now doubt to have been the timely
proceeds of an enormous crime. In September of
that year his wife perished, and Ito obtained the