The Account of the Transaction, with respect to the Robbery, you argue must be true, because Canning and Hall relate it both alike. But all Men see how weak an Argument that is. I will not suppose Mr. Fielding can be guilty of designing to impose upon the World in this or any Part of the Case which he has published; and therefore I will call it only a weak Argument. Let us consider the Circumstances under which these Accounts were procured, and we shall see they could not be otherwise than perfectly alike, even tho' they both were false.
We, who suppose the Convict innocent, believe the Account of Canning to be a concerted Plan, long laboured, and well inculcated. That she should not vary herself in the relating it, will not therefore be wonderful: And I shall allow you Council! for you are not here acting in any other Character; that if the Evidence Hall had made a free and voluntary Confession, without Fear, and without Constraint, and this Confession had in all Points confirmed the Account of the other; and if she had before known nothing of her Story; there would have been all the Argument and all the Weight in it that you would have us grant.
But let me ask you, Sir, for none know better than you do, were these the Circumstances of that Confession? I need not ask you: Your Pamphlet contradicts it. She refused to confess any such thing, you tell us so yourself, throughout six Hours of strong Sollicitation, and she consented to do it at last: Why? She says, and you say the same, it was because she was else to be prosecuted as a Felon.
Let us suppose the Story as we think it: An innocent and an ignorant Creature saw
Perjury strong against herself: She saw a Prison the immediate Consequence: She supposed the Oaths that prevailed against her Liberty, though innocent, might also prevail against her Life, though innocent; and, to save herself from the Effects of this Perjury, she submitted to support the Charge it made against others: Against those whom she supposed condemned without her Crime, and whom she thought too certain of Destruction to be injured by any thing she added.
That this was the Case, her own Account, that of the World, and even yours, concur to prove; nay, and the very Consequences prove it. If she had sworn the Truth at this Time, is it, or can it be supposed, that, unawed and untempted (for I had no Authority, and the Lord Mayor has Testimony that he used none with her) is it to be supposed that she would have gone back from it to Falshood? and that she would have done this at a Time when it might have been destructive to herself; and when it could only tend to let loose upon her those whom she had injured, and those whom she always affected at least to fear? Certainly she would not. There could be
in Nature no Motive to her doing it; and the most irrational do not act without some Impulse.
But let us ask the Question on the other Part! We shall then find it answered easily. Let us suppose we see, for 'tis most certain we do see such a one, a Person who had been awed by her Ignorance, and Fears, into swearing a Falshood; after having first voluntarily declared, in the same Case, that which was the Truth: we see her conscious that, by that Oath, she had procured the Sentence of Death against a Person whom she knew to be innocent; and we shall not wonder at the Consequence. Who is there lives, so abandoned, that he can say he never felt a Pang of Conscience? The Ideot, the Atheist would in vain attempt to persuade Men of it. Suppose what she had thus sworn to be false, as there are now a Multiplicity of Proofs that it all was false, what are we to imagine must be the Consequences? Unquestionably, Terror, Anguish, and Remorse; Wishes to speak, and Eagerness to do it. Where is the
Wonder then that she should snatch at the first Opportunity; that she should be persuaded to do it, even by the most Uneloquent! Where the Wonder that she should thus go back into that Truth which she had late denied; and when she had confessed the Perjury, declare and testify, for she did much more than declare it, her Heart at Ease from that which had been a Burden and a Distress intolerable and insupportable.