416
The Green Bag.
unexceptionable in tone and unanswerable in argument, shall form our text, (i) The evidence of motive was not strong. But Pritchard was in pecuniary difficulties. His practice was not large. His bank-account was overdrawn; and he had a pecuniary interest in the deaths of the two ladies. (2) Antimony, with aconite superadded in the case of Mrs. Taylor, was beyond all doubt the cause of death. (3) The prisoner was in possession of both poisons. In it self, of course, this was not more extraordi nary than that a lawyer's library should contain a copy pf " Russell on Crimes." Taken with other circumstances, however, it was a not unimportant adminicle of proof. (4) There was no suggestion of suicide. There could be no suggestion of accident. The length of Mrs. Pritchard's illness, and
the mysterious presence of aconite in Mrs. Taylor's sedative were conclusive on that point. (5) Only two persons could have done the deed, — Dr. Pritchard, and Mary Macleod,1 a servant-girl whom he had seduced and promised to marry if Mrs. Pritchard died. But the case was essen tially one in which, as the Solicitor-General said, you could trace a doctor's finger. The subsequent facts in Lord Young's career are soon told. He became Lord Ad vocate. He piloted the Education Act of 1872 through the House of Commons. By a mere accident he missed the Law lordship of Appeal, now worthily held by Lord Watson, and consoled himself with a judge ship of the Court of Session. 1 Before his death. Pritchard completely exonerated Macleod from any complicity in either murder.