Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/107

 of December 26, 1871, the writer of which, who had devoted more than ordinary attention to the question of the Gowrie Conspiracy, says:—

"'The question of the genuineness or spuriousness of the Logan Letters may be considered the crucial test of the truth or falsehood of the Gowrie Conspiracy.'"

I am willing to accept this test; and I say, that if the letters had been then in existence they would have been produced at the trial of Sprot. My opinion is that they were fabricated in the interval between the trial of Sprot and the trial of Logan's bones. At the same time I admit that my reviewer—who says "we have subjected the letters to a very searching examination, on which we entered with strong misgivings about their genuineness"—has some advantages over me in having "had the opportunity of comparison with three undoubted signatures of Logan—one of them appended to a document in Lord Napier's possession; the other two occurring in the Public Records;" and the further, he says, "we pushed our investigation, the more did our suspicions disappear, till the evidence of genuineness became so overwhelming that we could no longer resist it."

On this it is necessary to remark that the