“Prisoner at the bar, I am glad to say that my opinion may be altered with regard to your hardened state; I may lament, also, that the prayer of that petition made in your behalf was not sooner complied with, as you expected it would have been. This will not, however, excuse your crime. It might be sufficient to establish the propriety of your conduct up to that time, but your subsequent act completely cancelled that character. You have artfully attempted to throw the blame, which rests entirely with yourself, upon me as your judge.” Here Margaret looked at him with piercing scrutiny, but uttered not a word. “He will not blame himself again under similar circumstances, having had such occasion to blame himself for too great leniency upon your former trial. You are sufficiently sensible to be aware of the short time you have to live, and of the necessity of making good use of it. I shall add no more than the judgement of this court, which is——”
Here the judge passed the sentence in the same awful words as he had formerly done.
There were many in that court who felt for the prisoner more than the finest eloquence could express. She received the sentence without any of those deep feelings which she had formerly exhibited; she looked as mildly and quietly at the judge as if she had only been receiving his advice; she curtsied respectfully to him and the court; and then she firmly receded from the dock, and returned to the care of the gaoler.
It was observed by several persons of the court, that the Lord Chief Baron did not rally his wonted cheerfulness during the succeeding business of the day. Whatever may be said of the habit of sternness and indifference to the real promptings of nature, which men who administer the laws of their country usually entertain (and a judge is seldom guilty of any exhibition of human weakness in the act of condemning a fellow-creature to death), yet Chief Baron Macdonald most certainly did feel a strange sensation of nervous sensibility with regard to the unfortunate woman he had that day condemned. He was more abstracted and thoughtful upon her case than upon any other which came before him. He could not dismiss it from his mind with his wonted consciousness of composure. He continually reverted to her extraordinary character whenever a pause in the business of the court afforded him an opportunity to speak to the high sheriff, and he was heard to say—
“I should like to examine the spot whence this wonderful woman effected her escape. The more I think of what I have been told of her, and of what I have heard from her own lips, the more curious I am to inspect the gaol. If I have an opportunity before I return to town, I most assuredly will do so. I wish I could see that woman, and be myself incog. I could then judge of some things which appear to me inexplicable in such a person. Whence does she gain such powers of speech, such simplicity of manners, and yet so truly applicable to her situation? There must be mind and instruction too!”
The high sheriff, who was a man of the most humane disposition, here ventured to tell the judge that many of the magistrates thought that her life would have been spared on account of their former recommendation. This was quite in private conversation, and only came to light after the business of the assizes was over. Let whatever influence may have been exercised with his lordship in behalf of the prisoner, or let it have been simply his own conviction that mercy would not again be unworthily extended, before he left Bury her sentence was once more changed from death to transportation. But this time it was for life, instead of for seven years or for any fixed period.
Margaret received the announcement of this change without any expression of joy for herself or thankfulness to her judge. She regretted that she should have to linger out so many years of her existence in a foreign land, and when told of it as an act of mercy, she replied “that it was no mercy to her.”