dence leads clearly to the conclusion that the prisoner administered, and attempted to adminis ter, arsenic to her husband with intent to murder, yet it does not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his death was in fact caused by the ad ministration of arsenic." In the subsequent biography of the pre siding judge, the late Sir James Fitz James Stephen, by his brother, Mr. Leslie Stephen, the matter is thus stated (it will be seen that Mr. Leslie Stephen, who no doubt had legal assistance in this part of his narrative, omits all reference to the words which are italicized, and which were, of course, not italicized by the Home Secretary) : — "The sentence was afterwards commuted to penal servitude for life, with Fitz James' approval, and, I believe, at his suggestion, upon the ground, as publicly stated, that although there was no doubt that she administered poison, it was possible that her husband had died from other causes." And in a new edition of his " General View of the Criminal Law of England," published some months after the trial, the judge de scribes the case of Mrs. Maybrick " as the only one out of a large number tried before him in which there was a doubt as to the facts." Mr. Lincoln, the American ambassador, had an interview with Lord Salisbury on the subject, before the decision was publicly announced, and he reported to his Govern ment as follows : — "His Lordship at once replied that the subject had been anxiously considered, and that he believed he could say that the death-sentence would not be executed, as all the medical evi dence attainable left a reasonable doubt as to the death having been caused by the arsenic adminis tered by Mrs. Maybrick." And in his subsequent answer to an American petition Lord Salisbury said : — "Taking the most lenient view which the facts proved in evidence and known to her Majesty's Secretary of State admit of, the case of this con vict was that of an adulteress attempting to poison her husband under the most cruel circumstances while she pretended to be nursing him on his sick-bed."
In the face of these declarations by the judge, the Home Secretary, and the Prime Minister, the idea may be dismissed that the Government was convinced that the pris oner had really murdered her husband, but looked for some excuse to avoid an execu tion which would have created a popular outcry. I was in England at the time of this trial, and I was in a situation to come more or less in contact with public opinion there outside of Liverpool, and I then formed the opinion that great doubt existed in the public mind as to the guilt of the ac cused. There was also felt in English circles, a strong sense that the trial justice had not dealt at all fairly with the accused in his charge to the jury. I then formed the opinion, which I still entertain, that, had not the Home Secretary interfered and prevented the public execu tion of Mrs. Maybrick, the public feeling then ran so high, that a change in the Eng lish system would have been insisted upon by the general public clamor, giving the right of appeal in capital cases, as a matter of strict right to all condemned to death. It seems clear that the doubt whether Mr. Maybrick had died of arsenic was really and generally entertained. What seems to have been wanted was, not an excuse for sparing her life, but an excuse for not setting her at liberty. And a perusal of the medical evidence given at the trial will satisfy any impartial reader that there were very grave reasons for doubting whether Mr. Maybrick died of arsenic; while the difference of opinion on that subject continues to agitate the medical profession up to the present. It will further, I think, be conceded that no evidence tending to prove that Mr. Maybrick died of arsenic has been procured since the trial, but that, on the contrary, a good deal of evidence has been procured which increases the doubtfulness of the cause of death.
