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.
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