Shaw found Sceptical Essays interesting and though-provoking. However, he is shocked by BR's statement that "The real crime of Sacco and Vanzetti was that they were anarchists". He goes on to say that while it may be reasonable to doubt a jury, surely BR cannot doubt the "integrity of mind" of the Governor, Alvan T. Fuller, and his special counsellors, A. Lawrence Lowell, Samuel Wesley Straton, and Judge Robert Grant, based on the sources that BR would have had available in England.

Shaw continues that he is curious which sources led BR to his conclusions and asks him to provide them to him, so that his own mind might changed.