Now, to my mind, it is a proposition so plain as not to require arguing, that there must have been at least two persons engaged in the two-fold transaction of dictating the Letter and of being the penman of the same. For although it is, of course, physically possible that the work may have been accomplished by one and the same person, yet that there was a division of labour in the two-fold transaction is infinitely the more likely supposal: because of the terrible risk to the revealing conspirator of his handwriting being detected by the Government authorities, and, through them, by his co-partners in guilt, should he have rashly adventured to be his own scribe; and this though he feigned his penmanship never so cunningly.

Now if such were the case, it follows that there must have been some second person— some entirely trustworthy friend— in the conspirator’s confidence. Nay, if the exigencies of the nature and posture of affairs demanded it, a third person, or even a fourth, might have been also taken into confidence. But only if absolutely necessary. For the risk of detection would be proportioned to the number of persons in the secret:— it being a rule of common prudence in such cases that confidences must not be unnecessarily multiplied.

Therefore it follows that, supposing there was a second person in the confidence of the “discovering” or revealing conspirator to pen the Letter; and supposing there was a third person in the confidence of that conspirator, with or without the knowledge and consent of the second person, to act as a go-between, an “interpres,” between the conspirator and Lord Mounteagle, these two persons must have been very trustworthy persons indeed.

Now a man trusts his fellow-man in proportion as he has had knowledge of him either directly or indirectly; directly by personal contact, indirectly through the recommendation of some competent authority.

Experientia docet. Experience teaches. A man has knowledge of his fellow-man as the resultant of the experience gained from relationship of some kind or another. And relationship is created by kinship, friendship, or business— intending the word “business” to embrace activity resulting from thought, word, and deed extending to the widest range of human interests conceivable. Relationship creates bonds, ties, obligations between the several persons united by it.

Hence, the practical conclusion is to be drawn that if “the discovering” or disclosing Gunpowder conspirator, with a view to revealing the intended massacre, had recourse to one or more confidants, they must have been one or more person or persons who were united to him by kinship, friendship, or business, in the sense predicated, possibly in all three, and that they must have been persons bound to him by bonds, which if “light as air were strong as iron.”

Let us now turn to the Evidence to-day available bearing upon the momentous document under consideration. We will begin by saying a few words respecting the Lord Mounteagle, whose name, at least, the Gunpowder Treason will have for ever enshrined in the remembrance of the British people.