Now, what was the period at which this poison began to act after its administration, assuming it to have been poison for the purpose of argument? It seems, from Mr. Jones’ statement, that the prisoner came and administered these pills; he saw him administer the pills somewhere about eleven o’clock, so that they were not administered upon his first arrival. The patient, as though with an instinctive sense of the peril which impended, strenuously resisted the attempt to make him take them, and no doubt those remonstrances and the endeavour to overcome them occupied some period of time. The pills at last were taken, and, assuming them to have contained strychnia (which I only do now for the purpose of argument), how soon did they begin to operate? Mr. Jones says he went down after this and had his supper, and came back about twelve o’clock. Upon his return to the room, after a word or two of conversation with Cook, he proceeded to undress and go to bed; and he had not been in bed ten minutes before the warning came that another of these paroxysms was about to take place. The maid-servants put it still earlier; they say that about ten minutes before twelve the first alarm was given, which would make the interval little more than three-quarters of an hour from the taking of the pills and the first manifestation of the symptoms. When, therefore, my learned friend’s witnesses tell us that it took an hour and a half or two hours, we have here another of those exaggerated determinations to see the facts only in the way that will make most for the view which they think proper to put forward. I say it certainly was not more than an hour, and I find in some of the experiments that have been made that the duration of time before which the poison began to work has been little less, if any less, than an hour. Mr. Morley, who is as much entitled to your attention as Mr. Nunneley--indeed, when I contrast the way in which the two men gave their evidence, I am paying him but a poor compliment when I say that he is as worthy of attention as Mr. Nunneley--Mr. Morley says in his evidence that five or six minutes, or something less than an hour, is the period which he observed the poison required to produce its effects upon animals, and in every one of the cases which we have got it will be seen that more than an hour was necessary. In the case of the girl at Glasgow, though I see the medical gentleman speaks of twenty minutes when he was called in, he could have only had that information from the statement of some of the people about. I see the nurse says it was three-quarters of an hour before the pills began to work upon the girl. There may have been some cause for the pills not beginning to take effect within a certain time after their administration; it would be very easy to mix them with some substance that should render them difficult of solution; nay, which might retard their action. I cannot for a single moment bring myself to believe, if in all other respects you are perfectly satisfied that the symptoms, the consequences, and effects were analogous and similar to those produced by strychnia, it is not because those pills may have taken a quarter of an hour or a longer time to manifest their working, it is not on that account you will hesitate to come to the conclusion that strychnia was administered in this case. But then they say, yes, but the premonitory symptoms were wanting here. They tell us in animals they observed that the animal manifests first some uneasiness, shrinks, and gathers itself into itself, as it were, avoids movement, and then certain involuntary twitchings about the head come, those being the premonitory symptoms before the paroxysms set in. They say there were no premonitory symptoms in Cook’s case; I utterly deny that proposition--I say there were premonitory symptoms of the most marked character, though he did not describe them in language. He is lying in bed--he suddenly starts up in an agony of alarm. What made him do that? Was there nothing premonitory, nothing that warned him that the paroxysm was coming? It is clear there must have been. He jumps up in his bed, and says, “Fetch me Palmer, I am going to be ill, as I was last night.” What was it but that he knew the symptoms that attended him on the previous evening were now warning him of what he might expect in a short period, unless succour could be obtained? He sits up, and he prays to have his neck rubbed. What was the feeling about the neck but a premonitory symptom which was to precede the paroxysm which presently supervened? He says, “Rub my neck, it gives me comfort to have it done.”