regard to the question whether, on the assumption of his guilt,
Mary Blandy was the intelligent agent of Cranstoun or his innocent
dupe, no one who has studied the evidence against her can entertain
a reasonable doubt. Apart from the threatening and abusive language
which she applied to her father, her whole attitude towards his last
illness shows how false were her subsequent professions of
affection. She herself has disposed of the suggestion that she
really believed in the love-compelling properties of the magic
powder, though such a belief was not inconceivable, as appears from
the contemporary advertisement of a "Love Philtre," of which a copy
is printed in the Appendix. She told her dying father that if he
were injured by the powder, she was not to blame, as "it was given
her with another intent." What that "intent" was she did not then
explain, but later she informed Dr. Addington that it was to "make
him [her father] kind" to Cranstoun and herself. In the speech which
she delivered in her own defence she said, "I gave it to procure his
love"; and again, on the conclusion of Bathurst's reply, "It is said
I gave it my father to make him fond of me: there was no occasion
for that--but to make him fond of Cranstoun." In her _Narrative_ she
repeats this statement; but in her _Own Account_, written and
revised by herself, she says, "I gave it to my poor father innocent
of the effects it afterwards produced, God knows; _not so stupid as
to believe it would have that desired, to make him kind to us_; but
in obedience to Mr. Cranstoun, who ever seemed superstitious to the
last degree." Here we have an entirely fresh (if no less false)
reason assigned for the exhibition of the wise woman's drug; only,
of course, another lie, but one which, disposes of her previous
defence. Of the true qualities of the powder she had ample proof;
she warned the maid that the gruel "might do for her," she saw its
virulent effects upon Gunnell and Emmet, as well as on her father
from its first administration, while her concealment of its use from
the physician, and her destruction of the remanent portion, are
equally incompatible with belief either in its innocence or her own.
Finally, her burning of Cranstoun's letters, which, if her story was
true, were her only means of confirming it, her attempts to bribe
the servants, and her statements to Fisher and the Lanes at the
Angel, afford, in Mr. Baron Legge's phrase, "a violent presumption"
o