bar, in order to bring her to justice for a crime of so black a dye
that I am not at all surprised at this vast concourse of people
collected together to hear and to see the trial and catastrophe of
so execrable an offender as she is supposed to be.

For, gentlemen, the prisoner at the bar, Miss Mary Blandy, a
gentlewoman by birth and education, stands indicted for no less a
crime than that of murder, and not only for murder, but for the
murder of her own father, and for the murder of a father
passionately fond of her, undertaken with the utmost deliberation,
carried on with an unvaried continuation of intention, and at last
accomplished by a frequent repetition of the baneful dose,
administered with her own hands. A crime so shocking in its own
nature and so aggravated in all its circumstances as will (if she is
proved to be guilty of it) justly render her infamous to the latest
posterity, and make our children's children, when they read the
horrid tale of this day, blush to think that such an inhuman
creature ever had an existence.

I need not, gentlemen, paint to you the heinousness of the crime of
murder. You have but to consult your own breasts, and you will know
it.

Has a murder been committed? Who ever beheld the ghastly corpse of
the murdered innocent weltering in its blood and did not feel his
own blood run slow and cold through all his veins? Has the murderer
escaped? With what eagerness do we pursue? With what zeal do we
apprehend? With what joy do we bring to justice? And when the
dreadful sentence of death is pronounced upon him, everybody hears
it with satisfaction, and acknowledges the justice of the divine