Henry Fielding

“ Upon the whole, this case, whether it be considered in a private or a public light, deserves to be scrutinised to the bottom; and that can be only done by the Government's authorising some very capable and very indifferent persons to examine into it, and particularly into the alibi defence of Mary Squires, the Gipsy woman. On the one side here is the life of a subject at stake, who, if her defence is true, is innocent; and a young girl, guilty of the blackest, most premeditated, and most audacious perjury, levelled against the lives of several innocent persons. ”

“ To discover most manifestly on which side it lies seems to be within the power of the government, and it is highly incumbent on them to exert themselves on this occasion, in order that by the most exemplary punishment they may deter men from that dreadful crime of perjury, which, in this case, either threatens to make the sword of justice a terror to the innocent, or to take off all its edge from the guilty ”

“ That street-robbers and Gipsies, who have scarce even the appearance of humanity, should be guilty of wanton cruelty without a motive, hath greatly staggered the world, and many have denied the probability of such a fact: Will they then imagine that this girl hath committed a more deliberate, and, therefore, a more atrocious crime, by endeavouring to take away the lives of an old woman, her son, and another man, as well as to ruin another woman, without any motive whatever? ”

“ To say truth, to judge well of this conformity is what we truly call sagacity, and requires the greatest strength and force of understanding. He, who gives a hasty belief to what is strange and improbable, is guilty of rashness; but he is much more absurd who declares that he will believe no such fact on any evidence whatever. The world are too much inclined to think that the credulous is the only fool ”

“ It seems, I think, that the wit of man could invent no stronger bulwark against all injustice and false accusation than this institution, under which not only innocence may rejoice in its own security, but even guilt can scarce be so immodest as to require a fairer chance of escaping the punishment it deserves. ”

“ But if, notwithstanding all I have here said, the narrative should still appear ever so improbable, it may yet become a proper object of our belief, from the weight of the evidence; for there is a degree of evidence by which every fact that is not impossible to have happened at all, or to have happened in the manner in which it is related, may be supported and ought to be believed. In all cases, indeed, the weight of evidence ought to be strictly conformable to the weight of improbability; and when it is so, the wiser a man is the sooner and easier he will believe. ”

“ On the other side, if the evidence of Elizabeth Canning is true, and perjury should, nevertheless, prevail against her, an innocent young creature, who hath suffered the most cruel and unheard-of injuries, is in danger of being rewarded for them by ruin and infamy; and what must extremely aggravate her case, and will distinguish her misery from that of all other wretches upon earth, is, that she will owe all this ruin and infamy to this strange circumstance, that her sufferings have been beyond what human nature is supposed capable of bearing ”

“ It could not be a lover; for among all the cruelties by which men have become infamous in their commerce with women, none of this kind can, I believe, be produced. What reason, therefore, can be assigned for this great degree of more than Christian forgiveness of such barbarous usage is to me, I own, a secret; such forgiveness, therefore, is at least as great a degree of improbability as any which can be found, or which can be feigned in her narrative.
Again, what motive can be invented for her laying this heavy charge on those who are innocent? ”

“ I am at this very time on this 15th day of March, 1753, as firmly persuaded as I am of any fact in this world, the truth of which depends solely on the evidence of others, that Mary Squires, the Gipsy woman, is GUILTY of the robbery and cruelty of which she stands convicted; that the alibi defence is not only a false one, but a falsehood very easy to be practised on all occasions where there are gangs of people, as Gipsies, &c. ”

“ In defiance, nevertheless, of this difficulty, I am determined to proceed to disclose, as far as I am able, the true state of an affair, which, however inconsiderable the parties may be in their station of life (though injured innocence will never appear an inconsiderable object to a good mind) , is now become a matter of real concern and great importance to the public; against whom a most horrible imposture, supported by the most impudent as well as impious perjury is dressed up, either on the one side or on the other. ”

“ The reader will be pleased to observe, that I do not here lay any weight on the evidence of Virtue Hall, as far as her own credit is necessary to support that evidence, for in truth she deserves no credit at all; the weight which I here lay on her evidence is so far only as it is supported by that evidence of fact which alone is always safely to be depended upon, as it is alone incapable of a lie. ”

“ After I had finished the examination of Virtue Hall, one Judith Natus, the wife of Fortune Natus, whom I apprehend to belong to the Gipsies, and who was found in the house with Virtue Hall, being examined upon her oath before me, declared, that she and her husband lay in the same room where Elizabeth Canning pretended to have been confined during the whole time of her pretended confinement, and declared that she had never seen nor heard of any such person as Elizabeth Canning in Wells's house. ”

“ In this happy kingdom, on the contrary, so tender is the law of the life of a subject, so cautious of unjustly or erroneously condemning him, that, according to its own maxim, De Morte Hominis nulla est Cunctatio longa, it proceeds by slow and regular gradations, and requires so many antecedent ceremonies to the ultimate discussion of a court of justice, that so far from being in danger of a condemnation without a fair and open trial, every man must be tried more than once, before he can receive a capital sentence. ”

“ The sixth objection hath, in my opinion, so little in it that had I not heard it insisted on by others, I should not myself have advanced it; common experience every day teaches us, that we endure many inconveniences of life, while we overlook those ways of extricating ourselves, which, when they are discovered, appear to have been, from the first, extremely easy and obvious. ”

“ And yet, if after all this precaution it should manifestly appear that a person hath been unjustly condemned, either by bringing to light some latent circumstance, or by discovering that the witnesses against him are certainly perjured, or by any other means of displaying the party's innocence, the gates of mercy are still left open, and upon a proper and decent application, either to the judge before whom the trial was had, or to the Privy Council, the condemned person will be sure of obtaining a pardon, of preserving his life, and of regaining both his liberty and reputation. ”

“ Men who have applauded themselves, and have been applauded by others, for their great penetration and discernment, will struggle very hard before they will give up their title to such commendation. Though they, perhaps, heard the cause at first with the impartiality of upright judges, when they have once given their opinion, they are too apt to become warm advocates, and even interested parties in defence of that opinion. ”

“ And if such a passion can be allowed any existence, where can we imagine it more likely to exist than among such people as these?
Besides, though to a humane and truly sensible mind such actions appear to want an adequate motive, yet to wretches very little removed, either in their sensations or understandings, from wild beasts, there may possibly appear a very sufficient motive to all that they did; such might be a desire of increasing the train of Gipsies, or of whores in the family of the mother Wells. ”

“ By the law of England, no man can be apprehended for felony, without a strong and just suspicion of his guilt; nor can he be committed to prison, without a charge on oath before a lawful magistrate. This charge must be again proved on oath, to the satisfaction of a large number (twelve at least) of the better sort of his countrymen (except in the case of an Appeal of Felony, which is now obsolete, and where the proceedings are still more ceremonial and tedious) , before the accused can be required to answer to it, or be put on his defence ”

“ It is true indeed, that as to her being confined there, Wells utterly denies it, but she as positively affirms that this Elizabeth Canning was never there at any other time, nor in any other manner. From this point then, so established, will result an utter impossibility; for unless this poor girl had been well acquainted with the house, the hay-loft, the pitcher, &c., how was it possible that she should describe them all so very exactly as she did, at her return to her mother's, in the presence of such numbers of people? ”

“ I do not mean that it is not within the strength of two men to carry a little girl (for so she is) ten miles, but that they could do this without being met, opposed, or examined by any persons in the much frequented roads near this town, is extremely strange and surprising. Thirdly, the Gipsy woman doth not seem to have had any sufficient motive to her proceedings. If her design was to make a prostitute, or a Gipsy, or both, of this poor girl, she would, in all probability, have applied to her during her confinement, to try what effect that confinement had produced. ”

“ These are Tully's words, and they are in the most especial manner applicable to every magistrate.
To the merit of having discharged this duty, my lord mayor as well as myself have a just title at all events. And for my own part, as I do not expect to gain, so neither do I fear to lose any other honour on the final issue of this affair; for surely the cause is of such a nature that a man must be intolerably vain who is ashamed of being mistaken on either side. To be placed above the reach of deceit is to be placed above the rank of a human being ”

“ If her design was murder, she had many easier and better ways than by starving, or if she had chosen this method of destroying the girl, it seems impossible to account for the conveying to her that bread and water, which would serve for no other purpose but to lengthen out the misery of a wretch against whom the Gipsy woman had, as appears, no foundation whatever of anger or revenge, and might have increased the danger of discovering the whole villainy. ”

“ All these are circumstances which arise from the nature of the fact itself. They are what Tully calls Evidentia Rei, and are stronger than the positive testimony of any witnesses; they do, indeed, carry conviction with them to every man who hath capacity enough to draw a conclusion from the most self-evident premises.
These facts being established, I shall oppose improbability to improbability, and first I begin by asking, Why did this girl conceal the person who thus cruelly used her? ”

“ In this respect it justly claims a preference to the institutions of all other countries; in some of which a criminal is hurried to execution, with rather less ceremony than is required by our law to carry him to prison; in many, the trials (if they may be called such) have little of form, and are so extremely precipitate that the unhappy wretch hath no time to make his defence, but is often condemned without well knowing his accuser, and sometimes without well understanding his accusation. ”

“ The inference, which may be drawn from this observation, a moderate degree of candour will oblige us to extend very far in the case of a poor simple child, under all the circumstances of weakness of body and depression and confusion of spirits, till despair, which is a quality that is ever increasing as its object increases, grew to the highest pitch, and forced her to an attempt which she had not before had the courage to undertake. ”

“ These, after a patient hearing of the witnesses against him, and after attending to his defence (in the making which, the law prescribes that every indulgence shall be shown him, and that even his judge shall be his counsel and assist him) must all concur in declaring on their oaths, that he is guilty of the crime alleged against him, or he is to be discharged, and can never more be called in question for the same offence, save only in the case of murder. ”

“ In order to lay this evidence before the reader in a fair and just light, it will be necessary to give a brief relation of the order of proceedings in this case, down to the time when Virtue Hall appeared first before me.
Upon the return of Elizabeth Canning to her mother's house in the manner above set forth, and upon the account which she gave of her unprecedented sufferings, the visible marks of which then appeared on her body, all her neighbours began to fire with resentment against the several actors concerned in so cruel a scene ”

“ Sixthly, that she should undergo all this hardship and fasting without attempting sooner to make her escape, or without perceiving the possibility of making it in the manner in which she at last says she did effect it, seems to be no less shocking to reason and common sense. ”

“ As to the fifth objection, she answers, that the cruel usage she had met with, and the condition she saw herself in, so affected both her mind and body, that she ate scarce anything during the first days of her confinement, and afterwards had so little appetite, that she could scarce swallow the hard morsels which were allotted her. ”

“ Tyshemaker, all, except the said Susannah Wells and Mary Squires, were discharged, and then that evening the said Fortune Natus and Sarah, his wife, laid up in the said workshop where the said Elizabeth Canning had been confined, so that, as this informant understood, it might be pretended that they had lain in the said workshop for all the time they had lodged in the said Susannah Wells's house. ”