Chapter 70

Here also the difficulty lay in weighing opposing sets of undisputable facts. The nearer men were to a position where they could fully judge all the technical details of that highly technical evidence, and the probable motives of the clashing witnesses, the more were they divided; they remain divided to-day upon the issue after more than thirty years. On the one hand was present an overwhelming motive to secure the conviction of a man against whom there was strong _prima facie_ evidence. That motive was the desire …