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Mr. Justice Cooper : If Lambert was rightfully convicted of perjury, must we not excise the whole of his evidence ? Dr. Findlay : I am content with that Mr. Justice Cooper: Then you say, excising the whole of Lambert's evidence, there was a case to go to the jury ? Dr. Findlay : Yes. Mr. Justice Cooper : Of course, that is what you must say. I mean, supposing we come to the conclusion after the case is finished, that Lambert was rightfully convicted of perjury—-that is the first branch —that is upon the perjury assigned in the indictment preferred against him. Dr. Findlay: Yes. Mr. Justice Cooper : That beingjjso, and he being a perjured witness, upon that assumption can any portion of his evidence be relied upon ? Although I think it follows that if a man in the course of his evidence has upon material points been rightly convicted of perjury, the question is can you place any reliance whatever upon his evidence ? Dr. Findlay : I do not require it. Mr. Justice Cooper : Then you must say that, excising the whole of Lambert's evidence, there was still a case to go to the jury based upon the presence of the sheep and the finding of the skins. Does not the finding of the skins depend a great deal upon some portion of Lambert's evidence ? Dr. Findlay : No, I submit it does not. Mr. Justice Cooper : I do not say you are wrong, or that Mr. Atkinson is wrong ; but I want to see how far your argument goes, because it is quite clear to me that if a man is convicted of perjury in any material part of the evidence given by him at a trial you cannot place any reliance upon any part of his evidence unless it is corroborated by independent witnesses. Mr. Justice Edwards : Of course there might be something that you could rely upon. There might be something sworn to by such a witness which was corroborated by documentary evidence. Mr. Justice Cooper : Yes, if it was corroborated by independent evidence. I wanted to see how far Dr. Findlay could legitimately go with his argument, I simply stated it as a general proposition. I do not say that it must apply in this case. Dr. Findlay : What one must do is to look at the case of perjury which was attempted to be made out. What the prosecution did was to take the story told by Lambert with regard to the 17th October as untrue. No attempt was made to show, because no assignment of perjury was made in respect to it, that Lambert perjured himself in saying that the skins were not put there by him, and no Court has found that he put the skins there, or has found that he committed perjury in denying that he put them there. Mr. Atkinson: Ido not think he denied it in 1887. Dr. Findlay : Yes, he did ; he was cross-examined. Of course, it was part of their case that he put the skins there. As it appears now by my learned friend that it was not part of their case that the skins were put there by Lambert Mr. Atkinson : Ido not know that it was. I was not conducting the case, and I was not aw r are that it was in evidence. Dr. Findlay : The next broad question is, was Lambert guilty ? As Mr. Justice Cooper has pointed out, my first main proposition is that the conviction of Meikle stands, whether Lambert was guilty or not. I now deal with the question, was Lambert guilty ? Now, your Honours, this case is unique, as my friend has pointed out. Meikle has protested his innocence with the vehemence to be expected from a man of his energies; Lambert has protested his innocence, if not with the same vehemence, certainly with the same consistency. Lambert has not the faculty of collecting people at streetcorners in various parts of the colony and addressing them on his wrongs; but if I were disposed to follow my friend in a somewhat rhetorical description of Lambert's wrongs, I might perhaps describe the sufferings on the part of an innocent Lambert much as my friend has so vividly and so eloquently described those suffered by Meikle. Lambert, too, had a wife, and he had six children ; they, too, had to suffer the loss of the breadwinner and all the disgrace following on his conviction. If in the course of my duty I can show you this man was innocent, or at least create in your Honours' impartial mind some grave doubt of his guilt, then I feel I am doing a service to the interests of justice generally. Might I ask you, in opening up this wide question, to look at the position in which Lambert stood ? Here on the one side is J. J. Meikle, a strong, forceful, cunning man. He had long been in contest with a large investment and land company —a company owning several stations and many thousands of sheep. In any contest between this small farmer and this large land company the sympathy of Meikle's neighbours must naturally lie with him, and not in favour of the impersonal corporation possessing such wealth and means. In the first place, therefore, it would be easier for Meikle to find assistance in this conflict —at any rate so far as the evidence of neighbours was concerned—than for this company. But it was infinitely easier for Meikle to get assistance from his neighbours as witnesses than it was for this informer Lambert. There lives in. the prejudices of British people some traces of that old day when the law was more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and when an informer was a man more to be detested than believed. This blind prejudice lives on still, and an informer in our own day carries on his back an amount of obloquy which in the cool light of reason is absolutely wrong. You have learned that this man Lambert had to suffer the contemptuous epithet of " informer " to be applied to him. We are told that he rounded upon a man once, and struck him. It illustrates to your Honours, apart from the guilt or innocence of Meikle, the kind of feeling the neighbourhood would extend towards Lambert. And when Lambert turned to look for evidence, so far from finding volunteers, he found the cold shoulders of many who might have assisted him. And I ask you in considering the evidence that he was to receive £1 per week—and £50 if he could bring the thief to justice—in considering that evidence and the inference to be drawn from it that you should consider also the inference that

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