"A.—Captain Harvey Tuckett.
"Q.—Did you speak to him?
"A.—I did.
"Sir William Follett.—I wish you would put your questions differently!
"Attorney-General.—We ask him whom he saw.
"Sir William Follett.—He does not know Captain Harvey Tuckett, I suppose.
"Q.—Did you speak to him?
"A.—I did."
The Attorney-General then tendered the card in evidence: and Sir William Follett, ignorant of what was written in it, (for the Attorney-General had not specified in stating the case,) objected to its being received. On this a very ingenious and elaborate argument ensued between him and the Attorney-General, whether this card was or was not admissible in evidence, at all events in that stage of the case. The latter insisted on the affirmative, on the ground that the card had been given to the constable in Lord Cardigan's presence, and the constable had afterwards gone to the address specified in the card. It was therefore a part of the res gestæ. "No," answered Sir William Follett; "it does not appear who it was that gave this card, or that Lord Cardigan saw it, nor that he knew what was written on it. The Attorney-General is trying to prove an important fact in the case, by an apparent admission of Lord Cardigan; whereas he is not shown to have had any cognisance whatever of the fact which he is supposed to have admitted!" The Lord High Steward said that, at all events, the House would postpone for the present its decision as to the admissibility of the card. "Whether the Attorney-General," said Sir William Follett, "will have any other evidence to prove who it was that had given the card, or to connect the card with the Earl, is another question"—which doubtless occasioned no little anxiety to the Earl and his astute counsel.
The next witnesses were the miller's wife and son, who were cross-examined by Sir William Follett irritably and severely, but ineffectually. They did not, nevertheless, appear to carry the case much farther than had the miller. Then came Mr Busain, the police inspector, who gave evidence of the facts already stated in connection with his name, in the Earl's avowal that he had just fought a duel, and hit his man. On his being asked a very critical question, viz., as to Captain Tuckett's having called at the magistrate's office and given his name, Sir William Follett anxiously and hastily interposed—"Was Lord Cardigan present then and there?" to which the answer was, "No, he was not." Sir William Follett therefore succeeded in excluding what Captain Tuckett had said on calling at the magistrate's office, and thus again "averted the decisive stroke."[58]