But he is not satisfied with that--it is clear that he meditated another fraud of a different description. On the Friday, almost as soon as the breath is out of the man’s body, he intimates that he has a claim upon him for £3000 or £4000 in respect of bills which had his (Palmer’s) name or acceptance upon them, but which, in fact, had been negotiated for Cook’s purposes. He tells the same story to the father-in-law, but it is as clear as the sun at noonday that he endeavoured to fabricate an instrument to give a show of colour to those representations. He goes on the Thursday or the Friday to Mr. Cheshire, and brings to him a document which he asks him to attest, that document bearing the signature “J. P. Cook.” The man having left the body, and living only in the spirit eight-and-forty hours before that signature had been brought to be attested, who can fail to see that here was some great fraud and design meditated? What was the document? It was a document which purported to be an acknowledgment from Cook that certain large bills which had been negotiated were for Cook’s benefit, and for Cook’s benefit alone, and that he (Palmer) had had no part of the proceeds. Now, there are no such bills in existence. We have exhausted the bills pretty well, I think, and none such are proved to exist; but if there be any such bills in existence, who would know it better than the prisoner at the bar? He could have no difficulty in satisfying you of the fact, and of removing this great stumbling-block in the way of his defence; but he produces this document; and on the same day, the day that followed this poor man’s death, he writes to Pratt, and says, “Mind, I must have ‘Polestar’ if it can be arranged.” What was this scheme? Having got every shilling of the man’s money, his purpose was to secure the little property that remained in “Polestar,” the value of which he may perhaps to himself have considerably exaggerated. The mare had just won, and she might be supposed to be worth more than she had been, or he had in view speculating at other races to bring about results of benefit to himself. Further, he may have intended to pay out of Cook’s estate some of those bills, under the pretence that Cook had had the money for them. For all these purposes, from the beginning to the end, it was necessary that Cook should be put on one side. Then with this document in his hand he goes to Cheshire, and he asks Cheshire to attest the signature of a man who was then dead. If Cheshire had had the weakness and wickedness to comply he would have had him in his power; and the next thing would have been that he would have brought him trembling and reluctant into the witness-box of some Court of justice to swear to the fact that he had seen the dead man put his signature to that piece of paper. But it may be suggested that, after all, the document was a genuine one, and that the signature was not a forgery. Then produce it and we can judge. Here, again, I point out, and there is no escape from it, that the papers of the prisoner were in his possession till the time of his arrest, and they have been taken care of since then, and are here one and all, either to be answered for or produced in his presence, or they have been handed over to his brother. Who would not fail to notice that this paper has never been found or asked for? Who can doubt that that paper brought to Cheshire remained in the possession of the prisoner? Who can doubt that it is either destroyed or is purposely withheld? Under these circumstances who can doubt that in it is to be found proof of some meditated act--of some vast design of a fraudulent and flagitious character, for the full completion of which the death of Cook was a necessary thing?