98 Mr. Parkes' additional Observations 



The next charge which these Associates have thought proper 

 to make is respecting Wilkinson's evidence, for that I professed 

 to have " gone through the whole with great care and to have 

 collected the principal points into one view," and yet have neg- 

 lected to comment upon his last experiment which they con- 

 sider the most important of all. They say that I have " not 

 scrupled to conceal this experiment," that " Mr. Parkes, aware 

 of the importance of this person's evidence, has not scrupled so 

 to garble and curtail it, as to render it a more easy task for him 

 afterwards to dispose of the evidence of the scientific gen- 

 tlemen who followed" — that " I have entirely omitted his, 

 (Wilkinson's) account of the only experiment that was witnessed 

 by the several scientific gentlemen who attended in behalf of 

 the defendants, and that this was purposely omitted," — that I 

 have " wilfully misquoted his words, in order to give a different 

 meaning to what was intended," — and that I have given " no 

 description of the experiments at all, and cannot even under- 

 stand them." 



To all this I reply, Can any candid and ingenuous person 

 suppose that 1 should, without being publicly called upon, have 

 undertaken to give a correct account of the chemical evidence 

 that was adduced on this important trial, and then have entered 

 upon the task with a determination to conceal some parts, to 

 garble and curtail others, and to misrepresent and pervert what 

 had been adduced by the defendants' witnesses, for the purpose 

 of making a false impression upon the public ? Is it likely that 

 any man of common understanding, even if he were destitute 

 of all good principle, could act thus ? and when it is considered 

 that the experiments which I had made were corroborated by so 

 many respectable and scientific gentlemen, and that a most in- 

 telligent jury had paid the highest possible compliment to our 

 testimony by giving a verdict for the plaintiffs, I am sure it will 

 not be believed that I could possibly have had any motive 

 powerful enough to induce me to misrepresent a single circum- 

 stance respectmg either the one party or the othet. 



In abridgmg Mr. Gurney's report of the trial, which occupies 

 248 closely printed pages of royal octavo, I was obliged to study 



