For the Plot was “his father’s contrivance,” considered as to its broad ultimate effects on the course of English History, in that the Plot was made a seasonable handle of for the destruction of English Popery. And a valuable and successful handle it proved too, as mankind knows very well to-day. Though “what’s bred in the bone” is apt, in this world, “to come out in the flesh.” Therefore, the British statesman or philosopher needs not be unduly alarmed if and when, from time to time, he discerns about him incipient signs, among certain members of the English race, of that “staggering back to Popery,” whereof Ralph Waldo Emerson once sagely spoke.
“’Tis a strange world, my masters! And the whirligig of Time brings round strange revenges!”
CHAPTER XLIV.
We come now to the last portion of this Inquiry — to the last portion, indeed, but not to the least.
For we have now to consider what Evidence there is tending to prove that subsequent to the penning of the Letter by Father Edward Oldcorne, he was conscious of having performed the meritorious deed that, I maintain, the Evidence, deductions, and suggestions therefrom all converge to one supreme end to establish, namely, that it is morally (not mathematically) certain that his hand, and his hand alone, actually penned that immortal Letter, whose praises shall be celebrated till the end of time.
Before considering this Evidence let me, however, remind my readers that there is (1) not only a general similarity in the handwriting of the Letter and Father Oldcorne’s undoubted handiwork — the Declaration of the 12th day of March, 1605-6 — a general similarity in point of the size of the letters and of that indescribable something called style,[141] but (2) a particular similarity in the formation of the letters in the case of these following, namely, the small c/s, l/s, i/s, b/s, w/s, r/s, long s/s (as initials), short s/s (as terminals), while the m/s and n/s are not inconsistent.[A]
[A] Bentham aptly terms the comparison of Document with Document, “Circumstantial real Evidence.” — See Best’s “Principles of the Law of Evidence,” and Wills on “Circumstantial Evidence.” See Miss Walford’s Letter (Appendix).
Moreover, there is (3) this fact to be remembered, that in both the Letter and in the said Declaration, the name “God” is written with a small “g,” thus: “god.”