on the gums, as distinguishing it from other salivations. This being wanting, would diminish his confidence.

He had no doubt about Adeline's laboring under delusions for many years past; and considered the fact of delusions as proof of insanity. She seemed to him to be broadly insane; and her delusions broad and palpable, expressing themselves in the same way over a long period of time. He could give no opinion as to lucid intervals, but thought that at about the period when the act was done, she was laboring under insanity.

He did not agree with Dr. Stedman, as to the want of education.

She seemed to couple in her father in the general category of her enemies.

Her acuteness did not change his opinion. He appreciated her intellectual acuteness, but many insane persons show considerable mental power. He did not consider her as governed by sound motives in her conduct to those she thought her enemies. He did not think insane persons were often capable of concealing their insanity very long. He narrated the case of the Brazilian, mentioned in the trial of Rogers. In a sagacions insane person he would draw no inference, from the person's wishing not to be called insane.

On cross-examination, he said that he should no doubt have inferred that Elihu Phelps was under the action of some mercurial preparation, and thought the symptoms would arise from no single disease which he was acquainted with. But, in an ordinary case of salivation, the accidental setting-in of a bowel complaint would seem to him to produce a state of things similar to that in this

case.

Salivation is not necessarily mercurial.

There is an odor known as mercurial, but it is imitated in cases where no mercury has been taken. In itself he could recognize no difference between mercurial and other fœtor.

Some forms of what is called quinsy, he thought would produce symptoms essentially like these. He regarded the probabilities very strongly in favor of the supposition of mercury, but not so strongly as to preclude the possibility of some other cause. He thought from the accounts in the books, the writers consider the blue line invariable.

He had a strong belief that she was insane. The pre

sumption was very highly that way. Her cautioning the person who delivered the corrosive sublimate to her, as to concealment, was no evidence either way. Here was a continuous delusion, traced in 1844, 1845, and 1847, and again the last year. His experience led him to suppose it was continuous. Delusion might exist with all the other marks of calculation. In his opinion, she was irresponsible. She seemed to have connected her father somewhat with the conspiracy and with her feelings.

George Chandler, of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester, thought her insane, and that she had been so for several years. Her apprehensions of conspiracies, her false hearing, and her general conduct, were decided indications of insanity. She appeared to have some control of her actions, but not that control which a person of healthy mind would have. She had illusions in September. The fact of poisoning is not inconsistent with insanity. The evidence is not conclusive as to mercurial poisoning; it does not shut out all doubt as to other modes of death. The purulent appearance would raise a doubt.

On cross-examination, he said that great control over her mind had been shown during the trial; she conversed well on all points; he would be unwilling to say that she was not laboring under delusion, though there was a chance for supposing that she might have been able to control herself; her father was connected with the conspiracy in her mind. He would have acted upon the supposition of Elihu Phelps having taken mercury, and would have prescribed for that.

Dr. David T. Brown, recalled, mentioned a case within his own observation, where an insane lady poisoned her father.

Dr. Charles M. Duncan, of Shelburne, had not heard all the evidence of symptoms; had seen two cases of salivation without any obvious cause; disease or abscess of the prostate gland is a frequent cause of death; he had known several such cases, and described the symptoms.

The evidence for the defence here closed.

Mr. DAVIS closed the case for the defence; he argued at length that the evidence, though such as to raise a strong probability, was not conclusive of the fact that the death was caused by poison. He referred to the distinction taken in Greenleaf on Evidence, vol. 3, p. 29, as to the amount of evidence required to produce a result in civil

as compared with criminal cases; in civil cases a preponderance being sufficient, but in criminal no weight of preponderant evidence being sufficient, unless such as to remove all reasonable doubt. It was conceded that a post mortem examination would have furnished the most reliable evidence; the government had chosen to rest its case upon the less reliable evidence, while within ten miles of the place of trial there was a body which, subjected to scientific examination, would at any moment' furnish conclusive proof of the existence or non-existence of poison. Poor and imprisoned, his client had no means of going into this inquiry; but with what face could the government ask for a conviction, which had the power and the means to produce the best evidence, but had preferred to rely on what was inferior. In consequence of the course taken by the government, this case was to be tried as if all the discoveries of chemical and medical science for the last two hundred years were unknown or ignored; as if because the district was remote and the alleged criminal poor and unfriended, she might properly be deprived of the aid which the precise results of chemistry render to the legal investigation of such a case. He dwelt upon the consideration that the fact of death by poisoning, if found, was to be found by itself and without the aid of moral conclusions: and upon the further consideration that the scientific evidence produced in behalf of the prisoner, evidence of the highest authority, concurred to the point that symptoms alone were not conclusive. There were specific diseases under which this old man had long suffered there was also the incurable disease of old age from any or all of which the death might have occurred without the intervention of external injury.

But if the jury should find that here was satisfactory evidence of death caused by the prisoner, they were then to consider whether death was caused by a responsible agent. If they believed her insane, then all the horror which her language and her acts would at first cause, would change into pity and grief. Friendless, he believed

"Upon general principles, it cannot be doubted that courts of law would require chemical evidence of the poisoning wherever it were obtainable; and it is believed that no modern case of satisfactory conviction can be adduced where there has not been such evidence, or in its absence, the equivalent evidence of confession." Wills on Circumstantial Evidence, p. 221.

her to be, beyond all ordinary human friendlessness; for she might well be called most utterly friendless who was unable, through her illusions, to know who her friends were; who believed that her father and neighbors were leagued to kill her; and who at this moment undoubtedly believed that her counsel in his present address to the jury was hired by her enemies to aid in betraying her to an undeserved doom. (It may be remarked that to this last observation, the prisoner, who had been listening with earnest attention, was observed to nod her head and ringlets with the most emphatic assent.)

On this question of insanity he had but a single suggestion to make the jury had heard accounts of her illusions, extending over many years, and showing that the defence of insanity, so often perhaps improperly resorted to, would occur naturally enough to those who had longest known her. Were these horrors that had so long haunted her, genuine horrors? if genuine, then they would find her insane if they give faith to the opinions of a body of medical gentlemen, whose opinions upon this point would carry as much authority as any medical opinions to be obtained on either side of the Atlantic. In asking that under these circumstances her life might not be taken, he thought not so much of her or of a continuance of her wretched and melancholy existence, as of the boasted civilization to. which her conviction and execution upon such evidence would be a blot and a reproach.

MR. BATES, in closing the case for the government, after commenting upon the nature of the offence, its enormity, the form of the indictment, and the degree of proof, in a case of homicide, admitted, that the burden was upon the government to satisfy the minds of the jury, beyond every reasonable doubt, that the deceased died by poison, administered by the defendant. Any evidence, which would satisfy the mind of these facts, would be sufficient, as well whether it came from ignorant and unscientific men, or was sworn to by men of the highest medical attainments. The death was conceded. The means by which it was produced, was a subject of dispute. The jury would be struck with one fact, which was highly important. The deceased, though very old, was a strong, vigorous, healthy man. Suddenly, and at once, without any previous complaint, or without having taken any drug, he exhibited that peculiar combination of symptoms, which no other

known drug but mercury, in some of its forms, would produce. On this subject, there was no diversity of medical testimony. The symptoms were evident to those not of the profession, who had seen frequent appearances of salivation, and the physicians who were called to see him swore that they had no more doubt of his suffering from the effects of mercury, than if they had given it themselves. He lingered for fourteen days without food, and at last died from the constitutional effects, produced upon him by repeated portions of one of the most acrid of the irritating poisons. It had been urged that the government had failed to produce better evidence of the cause of the death, than the evidence of symptoms. But it was proved, that corrosive sublimate was an extremely soluble substance; that the quantity administered was, in its bulk, but a mere atom; that fourteen days had elapsed before the death; and, even, if at that time an examination had been made, it was doubtful whether any of the substance could have been found, or any thing more than additional evidence of extended symptoms. The jury would judge if this was necessary. They could believe that a man died of poison, without an analysis of the contents, of the stomach, just as they could believe that General Warren died. of a wound, and not of a fit before the ball struck him, though the fact was not verified by a post mortem examination. If his death was the result of poison, did the defendant administer it? On this subject he referred to the degree of evidence which the government was bound to produce. The defendant was a woman, and a daughter; and as the crime, if it was committed by her, was, in its atrocity, unparalleled in heathendom, he conceded that every reasonable doubt should be removed, before he could ask for a conviction. In encountering the presumptions arising from her sex and her relationship, all the evidence of her conduct, in fact the history of her life, so far as it had been developed, was most material for the consideration of the jury. Her repeated and violent assaults, her profane and abusive language, her threats, her mercenary motive, her purchase of the very material by which he died, the manner in which it was procured, her alleged reasons for its purchase, her investigation of the effects of poison upon the poisoned hog, her minute inquiries of the physicians as to its effects upon the human constitution, her devices and representations relative to