The Attorney-General opened the case in that way distinctly, that that was the theory for the Crown; “that Palmer had ordered some coffee for Cook on the Saturday morning; it was brought up by the chambermaid, Elizabeth Mills, and given to Cook by Palmer, who had an opportunity of tampering with it before giving it to Cook.” That was the statement which the Attorney-General was instructed to make. There is all the difference between her first statement, that up to the time she had given the coffee to Palmer for Cook, and that Palmer had an opportunity of tampering with it. The young woman would not go so far as that, but she went to this extent--“Palmer came over at eight o’clock--ordered a cup of coffee for Cook--I gave it to Cook--I believe Palmer was in the bedroom--I put it into Mr. Cook’s hands, but I did not see him drink it--I observed afterwards the coffee had been vomited.” The statement thus made by her before you was not so strong as that of the Attorney-General, but, on the other hand, it was a great deal stronger than the statement she made before the coroner, because, according to her story then, Palmer had not an opportunity of dealing with it--she “did not see Palmer up to the time she had given him the coffee.” From the statement which she made here you might suppose that Palmer, if he had chosen, might have got the coffee from Cook--but that is in the last degree improbable--and have done what he wanted to do with it; for she says, “Palmer came over at eight o’clock and ordered a cup of coffee, and that when it was made she took the coffee up into the bedroom and gave it into Cook’s hands” (she believed Palmer was there), “but she did not see him drink it, and afterwards she observed the coffee had been vomited.” These two statements, the one before the coroner and the other before you, are essentially different, and the difference between them consists in this, that the last one supports the theory now set up on the part of the Crown, while the first one is totally inconsistent with it. Can you rely on a woman who has altered her testimony to such an extent? But that is not all; the case for the Crown is that Cook was reluctant to take the pills which were given to him, and that he expressed a reluctance which Palmer of his own head overruled, and that Palmer knew that Cook was angry with him, or, at all events, displeased with him, for forcing him to take the pills. In the first statement of Elizabeth Mills before the coroner she said Cook said it was “the pills that made him ill, and that he had taken the pills about half-past ten.” When she came here she swore that Cook said “the pills which Palmer gave him at half-past ten made him ill”; thereby, you see, fixing the fact that Palmer gave him the pills, and fixing the time at which Palmer gave them to him, she having had an opportunity of learning that the later the pills were given the more favourable it would be to the suspicion that death had been occasioned by this poison. Before the coroner she did not say that Palmer was in Cook’s bedroom between nine and ten o’clock on the Monday night, but she did when she was here. You will see that makes him more about the bedside of Cook, having more opportunity of dealing with the pills. By these variances from her first statement she shows the animus which now, for some reason or other, actuates her. Perhaps it has been the result of the persuasion that Palmer was the murderer of Mr. Cook, as Dr. Alfred Swayne Taylor swore he is, and of her horror of so great a crime; that gives it the just, charitable construction; still, I say, she is not to be relied upon. I have mentioned the particulars in which her statements vary, but these are nothing to the important particulars to which I will now call your attention. I impeach her testimony on the ground that she adopted here a manner and a gesticulation in describing the symptoms under which Cook laboured which, if true, would have exhibited itself at the inquest, and would have at once attracted the attention of Dr. Taylor. The contortions into which she put her hands, and her neck, and her mouth, before you, could not by any possibility have escaped the attention of Dr. Taylor. If anything like it took place there it would have been observed by him, and questions would have been put to reduce, so to speak, those gesticulations into verbal expressions, that they might be recorded in the depositions. But that is not all. I am told, and you will have an opportunity of hearing it from Mr. Nunneley, Dr. Letheby, Dr.