We have strict statutes, and most biting laws--
The needful bits and curbs for headstrong steeds--
Which, for these fourteen years, we have let sleep,
Like to an o'ergrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey.
Measure for Measure.
"Euphemia Deans," said the presiding Judge, in an accent in which pity
was blended with dignity, "stand up and listen to the criminal indictment
now to be preferred against you."
The unhappy girl, who had been stupified by the confusion through which
the guards had forced a passage, cast a bewildered look on the multitude
of faces around her, which seemed to tapestry, as it were, the walls, in
one broad slope from the ceiling to the floor, with human countenances,
and instinctively obeyed a command, which rung in her ears like the
trumpet of the judgment-day.
"Put back your hair, Effie," said one of the macers. For her beautiful
and abundant tresses of long fair hair, which, according to the costume
of the country, unmarried women were not allowed to cover with any sort
of cap, and which, alas! Effie dared no longer confine with the snood or
riband, which implied purity of maiden-fame, now hung unbound and
dishevelled over her face, and almost concealed her features. On
receiving this hint from the attendant, the unfortunate young woman, with
a hasty, trembling, and apparently mechanical compliance, shaded back
from her face her luxuriant locks, and showed to the whole court,
excepting one individual, a countenance, which, though pale and
emaciated, was so lovely amid its agony, that it called forth a universal
murmur of compassion and sympathy. Apparently the expressive sound of
human feeling recalled the poor girl from the stupor of fear, which
predominated at first over every other sensation, and awakened her to the
no less painful sense of shame and exposure attached to her present
situation. Her eye, which had at first glanced wildly around, was turned
on the ground; her cheek, at first so deadly pale, began gradually to be
overspread with a faint blush, which increased so fast, that, when in
agony of shame she strove to conceal her face, her temples, her brow, her
neck, and all that her slender fingers and small palms could not cover,
became of the deepest crimson.
All marked and were moved by these changes, excepting one. It was old
Deans, who, motionless in his seat, and concealed, as we have said, by
the corner of the bench, from seeing or being seen, did nevertheless keep
his eyes firmly fixed on the ground, as if determined that, by no
possibility whatever, would he be an ocular witness of the shame of his
house.
"Ichabod!" he said to himself--"Ichabod! my glory is departed!"
While these reflections were passing through his mind, the indictment,
which set forth in technical form the crime of which the panel stood
accused, was read as usual, and the prisoner was asked if she was Guilty,
or Not Guilty.
"Not guilty of my poor bairn's death," said Effie Deans, in an accent
corresponding in plaintive softness of tone to the beauty of her
features, and which was not heard by the audience without emotion.
The presiding Judge next directed the counsel to plead to the relevancy;
that is, to state on either part the arguments in point of law, and
evidence in point of fact, against and in favour of the criminal; after
which it is the form of the Court to pronounce a preliminary judgment,
sending the cause to the cognisance of the jury, or assize.
The counsel for the crown briefly stated the frequency of the crime of
infanticide, which had given rise to the special statute under which the
panel stood indicted. He mentioned the various instances, many of them
marked with circumstances of atrocity, which had at length induced the
King's Advocate, though with great reluctance, to make the experiment,
whether, by strictly enforcing the Act of Parliament which had been made
to prevent such enormities, their occurrence might be prevented. "He
expected," he said, "to be able to establish by witnesses, as well as by
the declaration of the panel herself, that she was in the state described
by the statute. According to his information, the panel had communicated
her pregnancy to no one, nor did she allege in her own declaration that
she had done so. This secrecy was the first requisite in support of the
indictment. The same declaration admitted, that she had borne a male
child, in circumstances which gave but too much reason to believe it had
died by the hands, or at least with the knowledge or consent, of the
unhappy mother. It was not, however, necessary for him to bring positive
proof that the panel was accessory to the murder, nay, nor even to prove,
that the child was murdered at all. It was sufficient to support the
indictment, that it could not be found. According to the stern, but
necessary severity of this statute, she who should conceal her pregnancy,
who should omit to call that assistance which is most necessary on such
occasions, was held already to have meditated the death of her offspring,
as an event most likely to be the consequence of her culpable and cruel
concealment. And if, under such circumstances, she could not
alternatively show by proof that the infant had died a natural death, or
produce it still in life, she must, under the construction of the law, be
held to have murdered it, and suffer death accordingly."
The counsel for the prisoner, Mr. Fairbrother, a man of considerable fame
in his profession, did not pretend directly to combat the arguments of
the King's Advocate. He began by lamenting that his senior at the bar,
Mr. Langtale, had been suddenly called to the county of which he was
sheriff, and that he had been applied to, on short warning, to give the
panel his assistance in this interesting case. He had had little time, he
said, to make up for his inferiority to his learned brother by long and
minute research; and he was afraid he might give a specimen of his
incapacity, by being compelled to admit the accuracy of the indictment
under the statute. "It was enough for their Lordships," he observed, "to
know that such was the law, and he admitted the advocate had a right to
call for the usual interlocutor of relevancy." But he stated, "that when
he came to establish his case by proof, he trusted to make out
circumstances which would satisfactorily elide the charge in the libel.
His client's story was a short, but most melancholy one. She was bred up
in the strictest tenets of religion and virtue, the daughter of a worthy
and conscientious person, who, in evil times, had established a character
for courage and religion, by becoming a sufferer for conscience' sake."
David Deans gave a convulsive start at hearing himself thus mentioned,
and then resumed the situation, in which, with his face stooped against
his hands, and both resting against the corner of the elevated bench on
which the Judges sate, he had hitherto listened to the procedure in the
trial. The Whig lawyers seemed to be interested; the Tories put up their
lip.
"Whatever may be our difference of opinion," resumed the lawyer, whose
business it was to carry his whole audience with him if possible,
"concerning the peculiar tenets of these people" (here Deans groaned
deeply), "it is impossible to deny them the praise of sound, and even
rigid morals, or the merit of training up their children in the fear of
God; and yet it was the daughter of such a person whom a jury would
shortly be called upon, in the absence of evidence, and upon mere
presumptions, to convict of a crime more properly belonging to a heathen,
or a savage, than to a Christian and civilised country. It was true," he
admitted, "that the excellent nurture and early instruction which the
poor girl had received, had not been sufficient to preserve her from
guilt and error. She had fallen a sacrifice to an inconsiderate affection
for a young man of prepossessing manners, as he had been informed, but of
a very dangerous and desperate character. She was seduced under promise
of marriage--a promise, which the fellow might have, perhaps, done her
justice by keeping, had he not at that time been called upon by the law
to atone for a crime, violent and desperate in itself, but which became
the preface to another eventful history, every step of which was marked
by blood and guilt, and the final termination of which had not even yet
arrived. He believed that no one would hear him without surprise, when he
stated that the father of this infant now amissing, and said by the
learned Advocate to have been murdered, was no other than the notorious
George Robertson, the accomplice of Wilson, the hero of the memorable
escape from the Tolbooth Church, and as no one knew better than his
learned friend the Advocate, the principal actor in the Porteous
conspiracy"
"I am sorry to interrupt a counsel in such a case as the present," said,
the presiding Judge; "but I must remind the learned gentleman that he is
travelling out of the case before us."
The counsel bowed and resumed. "He only judged it necessary," he said,
"to mention the name and situation of Robertson, because the circumstance
in which that character was placed, went a great way in accounting for
the silence on which his Majesty's counsel had laid so much weight, as
affording proof that his client proposed to allow no fair play for its
life to the helpless being whom she was about to bring into the world.
She had not announced to her friends that she had been seduced from the
path of honour--and why had she not done so?--Because she expected daily
to be restored to character, by her seducer doing her that justice which
she knew to be in his power, and believed to be in his inclination. Was
it natural--was it reasonable--was it fair, to expect that she should in
the interim, become _felo de se_ of her own character, and proclaim her
frailty to the world, when she had every reason to expect, that, by
concealing it for a season, it might be veiled for ever? Was it not, on
the contrary, pardonable, that, in such an emergency, a young woman, in
such a situation, should be found far from disposed to make a confidant
of every prying gossip, who, with sharp eyes, and eager ears, pressed
upon her for an explanation of suspicious circumstances, which females in
the lower--he might say which females of all ranks, are so alert in
noticing, that they sometimes discover them where they do not exist? Was
it strange or was it criminal, that she should have repelled their
inquisitive impertinence with petulant denials? The sense and feeling of
all who heard him would answer directly in the negative. But although his
client had thus remained silent towards those to whom she was not called
upon to communicate her situation,--to whom," said the learned gentleman,
"I will add, it would have been unadvised and improper in her to have
done so; yet, I trust, I shall remove this case most triumphantly from
under the statute, and obtain the unfortunate young woman an honourable
dismission from your Lordships' bar, by showing that she did, in due time
and place, and to a person most fit for such confidence, mention the
calamitous circumstances in which she found herself. This occurred after
Robertson's conviction, and when he was lying in prison in expectation of
the fate which his comrade Wilson afterwards suffered, and from which he
himself so strangely escaped. It was then, when all hopes of having her
honour repaired by wedlock vanished from her eyes,--when an union with
one in Robertson's situation, if still practicable, might, perhaps, have
been regarded rather as an addition to her disgrace,--it was _then,_ that
I trust to be able to prove that the prisoner communicated and consulted
with her sister, a young woman several years older than herself, the
daughter of her father, if I mistake not, by a former marriage, upon the
perils and distress of her unhappy situation."
"If, indeed, you are able to instruct _that_ point, Mr. Fairbrother,"
said the presiding Judge.
"If I am indeed able to instruct that point, my Lord," resumed Mr.
Fairbrother, "I trust not only to serve my client, but to relieve your
Lordships from that which I know you feel the most painful duty of your
high office; and to give all who now hear me the exquisite pleasure of
beholding a creature, so young, so ingenuous, and so beautiful, as she
that is now at the bar of your Lordships' Court, dismissed from thence in
safety and in honour."
This address seemed to affect many of the audience, and was followed by a
slight murmur of applause. Deans, as he heard his daughter's beauty and
innocent appearance appealed to, was involuntarily about to turn his eyes
towards her; but, recollecting himself, he bent them again on the ground
with stubborn resolution.
"Will not my learned brother, on the other side of the bar," continued
the advocate, after a short pause, "share in this general joy, since, I
know, while he discharges his duty in bringing an accused person here, no
one rejoices more in their being freely and honourably sent hence? My
learned brother shakes his head doubtfully, and lays his hand on the
panel's declaration. I understand him perfectly--he would insinuate that
the facts now stated to your Lordships are inconsistent with the
confession of Euphemia Deans herself. I need not remind your Lordships,
that her present defence is no whit to be narrowed within the bounds of
her former confession; and that it is not by any account which she may
formerly have given of herself, but by what is now to be proved for or
against her, that she must ultimately stand or fall. I am not under the
necessity of accounting for her choosing to drop out of her declaration
the circumstances of her confession to her sister. She might not be aware
of its importance; she might be afraid of implicating her sister; she
might even have forgotten the circumstance entirely, in the terror and
distress of mind incidental to the arrest of so young a creature on a
charge so heinous. Any of these reasons are sufficient to account for her
having suppressed the truth in this instance, at whatever risk to
herself; and I incline most to her erroneous fear of criminating her
sister, because I observe she has had a similar tenderness towards her
lover (however undeserved on his part), and has never once mentioned
Robertson's name from beginning to end of her declaration.
"But, my Lords," continued Fairbrother, "I am aware the King's Advocate
will expect me to show, that the proof I offer is consistent with other
circumstances of the, case, which I do not and cannot deny. He will
demand of me how Effie Deans's confession to her sister, previous to her
delivery, is reconcilable with the mystery of the birth,--with the
disappearance, perhaps the murder (for I will not deny a possibility
which I cannot disprove) of the infant. My Lords, the explanation of this
is to be found in the placability, perchance, I may say, in the facility
and pliability, of the female sex. The _dulcis Amaryllidis irae,_ as your
Lordships well know, are easily appeased; nor is it possible to conceive
a woman so atrociously offended by the man whom she has loved, but that
she will retain a fund of forgiveness, upon which his penitence, whether
real or affected, may draw largely, with a certainty that his bills will
be answered. We can prove, by a letter produced in evidence, that this
villain Robertson, from the bottom of the dungeon whence he already
probably meditated the escape, which he afterwards accomplished by the
assistance of his comrade, contrived to exercise authority over the mind,
and to direct the motions, of this unhappy girl. It was in compliance
with his injunctions, expressed in that letter, that the panel was
prevailed upon to alter the line of conduct which her own better thoughts
had suggested; and, instead of resorting, when her time of travail
approached, to the protection of her own family, was induced to confide
herself to the charge of some vile agent of this nefarious seducer, and
by her conducted to one of those solitary and secret purlieus of villany,
which, to the shame of our police, still are suffered to exist in the
suburbs of this city, where, with the assistance, and under the charge,
of a person of her own sex, she bore a male child, under circumstances
which added treble bitterness to the woe denounced against our original
mother. What purpose Robertson had in all this, it is hard to tell, or
even to guess. He may have meant to marry the girl, for her father is a
man of substance. But, for the termination of the story, and the conduct
of the woman whom he had placed about the person of Euphemia Deans, it is
still more difficult to account. The unfortunate young woman was visited
by the fever incidental to her situation. In this fever she appears to
have been deceived by the person that waited on her, and, on recovering
her senses, she found that she was childless in that abode of misery. Her
infant had been carried off, perhaps for the worst purposes, by the
wretch that waited on her. It may have been murdered, for what I can
tell."
He was here interrupted by a piercing shriek, uttered by the unfortunate
prisoner. She was with difficulty brought to compose herself. Her counsel
availed himself of the tragical interruption, to close his pleading with
effect.
"My Lords," said he, "in that piteous cry you heard the eloquence of
maternal affection, far surpassing the force of my poor words--Rachel
weeping for her children! Nature herself bears testimony in favour of the
tenderness and acuteness of the prisoner's parental feelings. I will not
dishonour her plea by adding a word more."
"Heard ye ever the like o' that, Laird?" said Saddletree to Dumbiedikes,
when the counsel had ended his speech. "There's a chield can spin a
muckle pirn out of a wee tait of tow! Deil haet he kens mair about it
than what's in the declaration, and a surmise that Jeanie Deans suld hae
been able to say something about her sister's situation, whilk surmise,
Mr. Crossmyloof says, rests on sma' authority. And he's cleckit this
great muckle bird out o' this wee egg! He could wile the very flounders
out o' the Firth.--What garr'd my father no send me to Utrecht?--But
whisht, the Court is gaun to pronounce the interlocutor of relevancy."
And accordingly the Judges, after a few words, recorded their judgment,
which bore, that the indictment, if proved, was relevant to infer the
pains of law: And that the defence, that the panel had communicated her
situation to her sister, was a relevant defence: And, finally, appointed
the said indictment and defence to be submitted to the judgment of an
assize.