In conclusion, Lord Hardwicke said, "I will add no more: it has been his Majesty's justice to bring your lordships to a legal trial; and it has been his wisdom to show, that as a small part of his national forces was sufficient to subdue the rebel army in the field, so the ordinary course of his law is strong enough to bring even their chiefs to justice. "What remains for me, is a very painful, though a very necessary part. It is to pronounce that sentence which the law has provided for crimes of this magnitude--a sentence full of horror! Such as the wisdom of our ancestors has ordained, as one guard about the sacred person of the king, and as a fence about this excellent constitution, to be a terror to evil doers, and a security to them that do well." And then was heard, thrilling every tender heart with horror, the sentence of hanging, first to be put into execution, and followed by decapitation. The horrible particularities were added--"_of being hanged by the neck,--but not till you are dead--for you must be cut down alive;_"--the rest of this sentence, since it has long ago been suffered to fall into oblivion, may, for the sake of our English feelings, rest there. By those to whom it was addressed, it was heard in the full conviction that it might be carried out on them: since that very morning, nine prisoners of gentle birth had suffered the extreme penalties of that barbarous law.[373] Of the calm manner in which his doom was heard by one of the state prisoners, Horace Walpole has left the following striking anecdote: "Old Balmerino keeps up his spirits to the same pitch of gaiety: in the cell at Westminster, he showed Lord Kilmarnock how he must lay his head; bid him not wince, lest the strokes should cut his head or his shoulders; and advised him to bite his lips. As they were to return, he begged they might have another bottle together, as they should never meet any more till--he pointed to his neck. At getting into his coach, he said to the gaoler, 'Take care, or you will break my shins with this d----d axe.'"[374] The English populace could not forbear delighting in the composure of Balmerino, who, on returning from Westminster Hall after his sentence, could stop the coach in which he was about to be conducted to the Tower to buy gooseberries; or, as he expressed it in his national phrase, _honey-blobs_.[375] That night, not contented with saying publicly at his levee, that Lord Kilmarnock had proposed murdering the English prisoners, the Duke of Cumberland proposed giving his mistress a ball; but the notion was abandoned, lest it should have been regarded as an insult to the prisoners, and _not_ because a particle of highminded regret for the sufferers could ever enter that hard and depraved heart. Too well did the citizens of London understand the Duke of Cumberland's merits, when, it being proposed to present him with the freedom of some company, one of the aldermen cried aloud, "Then let it be of the Butchers'!"[376]