A.—'It would be not the less like.'"
Lord Meadowbank, it may be observed in passing, regarded the writings brought over by M. de Pages as "important," and handed them to the jury, on their retiring to consider their verdict.
The signatures of Louis, Fenelon, and Flechier were attempted to be proved also by certificates from M. Daunou, M. Villenave, and other eminent French antiquaries; but as they were living, such certificates were of course rejected. If these writings, then, were forgeries, they must have been most skilfully executed; and, in fact, the question as to their genuineness or spuriousness excited—as we learn from Mr Swinton,—great interest and much discussion in Paris. It may also be here mentioned, as a somewhat singular circumstance, that, a few years previously to this trial—as we also learn from Mr Swinton—a series of portraits and autographs of illustrious Frenchmen, published by Delpech, (Quai Voltaire, Paris,) contained fac-similes of the writing of Louis XV., Fenelon, and Flechier, exactly resembling the writings on the map attributed to them;—and in the specimen given in that work of the writing of Louis XV., which was taken from the collection of M. Villenave above-mentioned, occur the very two expressions, and similarly spelled, which are found on the map—"les cerconstances presentes"—and "oregenale." Mr Swinton speaks of this coincidence as "remarkable;" but to us it appears not at all so. What is easier than to conceive that, if the writings on the map were forgeries, the fabricator had before him at the time these very fac-similes, and astutely determined to introduce the expressions in question, with the peculiar spelling?
Let us now recur for a moment to the excerpt charter of the 7th February 1639. On the assumption that it was a forgery—what becomes of the writings on the map of De l'Isle? They then speak of—are bottomed on—a document of which there is no earthly trace whatever, except in a forged extract! If the excerpt be annihilated, so is the charter! And if so,—in the name of holy truth and ordinary common sense, how comes it, but by a double forgery, that we find on the map of De l'Isle, produced for the first time in 1837, all the essential elements of that charter, as far as sufficed to further the interests of the prisoner—viz., the altered destination of the titles and property, set forth verbatim et literatim, in conformity with the terms of the forged excerpt? "How, but through the evidence of one in the possession of this first forgery of the charter," asked the Solicitor-General,[43] "could the persons who executed the second arrive at such a close and perfect correspondence with the terms and effect of the former, as has been exhibited through the whole contents of the last?"
The prisoner's counsel said, in defence to this serious section of the charge—the map is not pretended to have been forged; nor is the date "1703" false. Who Ph. Mallet, or Caron St. Estienne, was, "at the distance of one hundred and thirty years, no one could tell." Flechier was alive in 1707, and therefore might have written the note attributed to him in that year, and so with Fenelon. "Now, gentlemen," said Mr Robertson, "what is the case of the Crown on the map? I think it rests entirely on the appointment of De l'Isle as premier géographe du Roi," which was unquestionably the true—the inevitable—issue on which to put the case; and he proceeded to contend, on grounds which we have already indicated in passing, that the Crown had not established the act of forgery, by clear, irrefragable, irresistible proof.
What, then, says the considerate reader, we ask, as we did in the former instance—were these writings on the map of Canada—any or all of them—genuine or spurious?
III. The De Porquet Packet. With every disposition to treat this item of evidence with the gravity and impartiality befitting quasi-judicial investigation, we acknowledge feeling extreme difficulty in doing so. To us, as English lawyers, intense would seem the simplicity of those expecting any rational being to give credit for an instant to the contents of this astonishing packet, as genuine. Two months after the judgment of the Lord Ordinary, pointing out the fatal flaw in the prisoner's pedigree—(viz., the non-proof of two particular steps in that pedigree—that John No. 3 descended from John No. 2, and the latter from John No. 1,) a sensitive and conscientious thief died—viz. in March 1837—in the exact nick of time, having kept by him till that sad event a packet which he had purloined from his employer in 1798[44] i. e. for forty years; and which packet contained four family documents, of vital moment, applying themselves with miraculous exactness to the deficiency in the pedigree aforesaid! We are here stating shortly, but correctly, the effect of a document under this head of the charge, set forth in the indictment. That document we gave verbatim in our last Number.[45] Messrs De Porquet, London booksellers, received a packet by the penny post, on opening which they found one addressed to Lord Stirling, accompanied by a note from a "Mrs. Innes Smyth," (of whom no one has hitherto seen, heard, or known anything whatever,) requesting them to send it to his lordship; whose son happening in the month of April 1837—i. e., a few weeks after the opportune death of the mysterious thief—to call at Messrs De Porquet, they gave him the packet addressed to his father. Instead of at once forwarding it to him, the young gentleman instantly took it to his solicitors; and after an exciting colloquy as to what this packet might contain, (the idea never occurring to him, that it would be the proper formal course to send it off to his parent according to its address,) it is arranged that they should go on the ensuing morning to a notary public, and open the packet in his presence! This was done; on which they discovered the interesting document above referred to, explaining the theft of the packet which it accompanied, cased in parchment, sealed with three black seals, "evidently," said the young Alexander, in his letter to the prisoner, "my grandfather's seals—not like those we have"—and with the following words, also instantly recognised as being in his grandfather's handwriting, on the packet—"Some of my wife's family papers"—that wife being the prisoner's mother, Hannah, daughter of John No. 3 (the Rev. John Alexander,) the "person of such great humility, and so perfectly unostentatious," according to her daughter's statement,[46] "that she did not take upon herself the title of Countess, though she often told her children that they had noble blood in their veins;—that she had two brothers, 'John' and 'Benjamin,' who had fully intended assuming their peerage honours, but for their premature death—unmarried!—whereby she," the lady aforesaid, "believed herself the last of the family of Alexander who were entitled to be Earls of Stirling!" The sheet of paper accompanying this mystic parchment packet had a black border, "owing to the death of the thief!"—who "had never dared to break the seals"—the threefold seals of the packet—"which accounts for the admirable state of preservation" in which the contents were after this forty years' interval!!![47] This inner packet the modest notary felt to be of too solemn a character to be opened in his presence; and recommended its being taken for that purpose to a functionary of commensurate solemnity—to wit, a proctor.[48] No sooner said than done: away they went to the proctor, with whom they were closeted five hours; and in whose presence—and that "of four witnesses"—the young gentleman ventured to cut the parchment over the middle black seal—and there appeared four enclosures which completely settled the business in favour of the claimant of the Stirling peerage. Never was anything so beautiful in aptitude. First, was a genealogical tree—thus:
| John, Eldest Son, born at Dublin, 1736, heir to the title and estates (!) | Benjamin, Second Son, born at Dublin in 1737. | Mary, Eldest Daughter, born at Dublin, 1733. | Hannah, Second Daughter, born at Dublin in 1741. | |||||||
| John, Sixth Earl of Stirling, (dejure,) died at Dublin, Nov. 1st, 1743, buried there. | Mary, Eldest Daughter, born 1683, died unmarried. | Elizabeth, born 1685, died 1711, leaving issue. | ||||||||
| John, Married Mary Hamilton of Bangor; settled at Antrim! after living many years in Germany! Died 1712. Buried at Newtown. | Janet, only surviving child of the heiress of Gartmore!!! | |||||||||
| "Part Of the Genealogical Tree of the Alexanders of Menstry, Earls of Stirling in Scotland, Shewing only the Fourth and now-existing branch (!) Reduced to pocket size, from the Large Emblazoned Tree in the possession of Mrs Alexander, of King St., Birm. By me, Thomas Campbell, April 15, 1759." | John, Fourth Son—marry'd (1.) Agnes Graham, the heiress of Gartmore! (2.) Elizabeth Maxwell!!! of Londonderry; settled in Ireland in 1646; died 1665. | |||||||||
| William, 1st Earl of Stirling—born 1580—m: Janet Erskine. Had issue, 7 sons and 3 daurs. Died 1640. Buried at Stirling." | ||||||||||
Secondly, came a letter from the above-mentioned "Benjamin" to the above-mentioned "John," his elder brother, (John No. 3,) speaking of the tombstone, and giving many interesting particulars concerning John of Antrim—his portrait, his education at Londonderry under his maternal grandsire Maxwell! his travels abroad, and "visiting foreign courts," (as indeed Fenelon would seem to have testified, as well as the aforesaid John himself, on Madlle. le Normand's map.) Thirdly, a letter to the same "John," (No. 3,) from a certain "A. E. Baillie," certifying as to the missing tombstone, who had written the inscription, (which was given at length in Madlle. Le Normand's map,) and assuring "John No. 3" that the writer had "always heard that your great-grandfather, the Hon. Mr Alexander, (who was known in the county as Mr Alexander of Gartmoir,) died at Derry, but 'the Papists of the north' had unfortunately destroyed the parish registers." Lastly, "a beautiful miniature painting of John of Antrim!"
Such were the contents of the De Porquet packet; and we must here add, that the superscription on the parchment, "Some of my wife's family papers," was clearly proved to be really the handwriting of the prisoner's father.