that it had been murdered. If any of the assize,« he said, »should be
of opinion that this was dealing rather narrowly with the statute, they ought to
consider that it was in its nature highly penal, and therefore entitled to no
favourable construction.«
    He concluded a learned speech, with an eloquent peroration on the scene they
had just witnessed, during which Saddletree fell fast asleep.
    It was now the presiding Judge's turn to address the jury. He did so briefly
and distinctly.
    »It was for the jury,« he said, »to consider whether the prosecutor had made
out his plea. For himself, he sincerely grieved to say, that a shadow of doubt
remained not upon his mind concerning the verdict which the inquest had to bring
in. He would not follow the prisoner's counsel through the impeachment which he
had brought against the statute of King William and Queen Mary. He and the jury
were sworn to judge according to the laws as they stood, not to criticise, or
evade, or even to justify them. In no civil case would a counsel have been
permitted to plead his client's case in the teeth of the law; but in the hard
situation in which counsel were often placed in the Criminal Court, as well as
out of favour to all presumptions of innocence, he had not inclined to interrupt
the learned gentleman, or narrow his plea. The present law, as it now stood, had
been instituted by the wisdom of their fathers, to check the alarming progress
of a dreadful crime; when it was found too severe for its purpose it would
doubtless be altered by the wisdom of the Legislature; at present it was the law
of the land, the rule of the Court, and, according to the oath which they had
taken, it must be that of the jury. This unhappy girl's situation could not be
doubted; that she had borne a child, and that the child had disappeared, were
certain facts. The learned counsel had failed to show that she had communicated
her situation. All the requisites of the case required by the statute were
therefore before the jury. The learned gentleman had, indeed, desired them to
throw out of consideration the panel's own confession, which was the plea
usually urged, in penury of all others, by counsel in his situation, who usually
felt that the declarations of their clients bore hard on them. But that the
Scottish law designed that a certain weight should be laid on these
declarations, which, he admitted, were quodammodo extrajudicial, was evident