Mr. BARON LEGGE—
Mary Blandy, you have been indicted for the murder of your father, and for your trial have put yourself upon God and your country. That country has found you guilty.
You have had a long and a fair trial, and sorry I am that it falls to my lot to acquaint you that I am now no more at liberty to suppose you innocent than I was before to presume you guilty.
You are convicted of a crime so dreadful, so horrid in itself, that human nature shudders at it—the wilful murder of your own father! A father by all accounts the most fond, the most tender, the most indulgent that ever lived. That father with his dying breath forgave you. May your heavenly Father do so too!
It is hard to conceive that anything could induce you to perpetrate an act so shocking, so impossible to reconcile to nature or reason. One should have thought your own sense, your education, and even the natural softness of your sex, might have secured you from an attempt so barbarous and so wicked.
What views you had, or what was your intention, is best known to yourself. With God and your conscience be it. At this bar we can judge only from appearances and from the evidence produced to us. But do not deceive yourself; remember you are very shortly to appear before a much more awful tribunal, where no subterfuge can avail, no art, no disguise can screen you from the Searcher of all hearts—"He revealeth the deep and secret things, He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him."
Let me advise you to make the best and wisest use of the little time you are likely to continue in this world. Apply to the throne of grace, and endeavour to make your peace with that Power whose justice and mercy are both infinite.
Nothing now remains but to pronounce the sentence of the law upon you, which is—
"That you are to be carried to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may God of His infinite mercy receive your soul."