from exposure. Some doubt arises after the trial; the prisoner cannot be pardoned, and is too glad to be let off with a mitigated punishment, unmerited if he be legally innocent, and too light if he be guilty. In the recent cases of Wright and of Townley, the same remark might have been made as was made by the king in the case of Dodd and the Perreaus.

But a case still more in point is the recent one of Dr. Smethurst, who, it will be recollected, was found guilty of poisoning Miss Bankes. Substantial evidence turned up after the trial, the weight of which seriously affected the verdict. In a civil case, how would such a matter be dealt with? A conditional order for a new trial would be applied for and granted; later, the conditional order would be argued, the matter investigated by several judges, the evidence carefully weighed, and finally a new trial granted. But in Smethurst's case-a case regarding life and death—a Home Secretary, a layman, goes through all these processes himself. True, he has assistance, and calls in the aid of the judge who tried the case, and these two authorities take on themselves the unconstitutional duty of re-trying the case and setting aside the verdict of a jury. True, the king can pardon or mitigate punishment, and this appears to be done under cover of his authority, but the king cannot do what is done by this process, overhaul the proceedings of a court-weigh evidence, and set aside a verdict because against evidence. He may extend mercy, because the case is what is called "a hard one," because there are "extenuating circumstances," but not because he thinks it should be tried differently.

CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH.

LAST DAYS.

THE miserable wife had a room in Ludgate-hill, so as to be near her husband. She came to him every day. Every night, after he was ordered for execution, he used to write her a letter. She was a true comfort in these days of horror. The house in Argyle-street had been seized on and almost wrecked under the bills of sale. A gentleman who lived till lately, recollected being present at the auction of the furniture, and found the drawing-room table piled up with letters, lying open there, signed by the most famous names of the day. These were sold with the "elegant French wines" which were such a feature at the Doctor's entertainments.

*

Even at this stage we see the unhappy man busy with what seems his old intriguing, and though his "Convict's Address" was said to have displeased the Methodists, they to the end made unusual exertions in his behalf. He received the religious assistance of

* Taylor.

a Moravian minister; and it does almost seem as though he were in some sort bidding for the enormous Methodist interest outside, by coquetting a little with their doctrines.

Up to this moment there had been great hope. A belief had got abroad that he would not be included in the order. The crowd of well-meaning friends buoyed him up with the assurance that it was almost impossible. One, even more cruelly injudicious than the rest, had accepted a false rumour without inquiry, and had written offering sincere congratulations on his pardon, obtained through the interest of the Prince of Wales. At every stage, sufferings seemed to be gratuitously accumulating for him. The night before the list of those "ordered for execution" arrived at the gaol, he passed in a very miserable condition. He was full of anxiety to know the result. Next morning the "friends" came to break the news gently to him; but with a natural instinct he stopped them, and said he read the whole in their faces. He afterwards told the ordinary that it was only during these last three days that he had really been persuaded to entertain any hope—that is, from the receipt of the letter about the Prince of Wales-but that from the very first he had looked on himself as a lost man. On the Sunday morning he complained, as he lay in bed, of a pain in his side, and the ordinary asked what it came from. He replied with something of pathos, "Lethalis arundo! and a deadly arrow indeed !”

To the end Johnson proved himself the true friend. As soon as the fatal warrant was signed, he took the trouble of obtaining, through his friend Mr. Chamier, an exact account of the disposition of

the Court, and what real chances there were of even a respite. This letter, which, though unfavourable, was to be depended on, he had sent to the condemned. He had worked while there was hope, and a chance of hope. Now there were but a few days left, and it was charity and true kindness to let the prisoner concentrate his thoughts on a more suitable subject.

Johnson had done all he could, but there was more required from him. It was Sunday, June the 22nd, and the terrible day, fixed for Friday, was drawing on rapidly. Johnson had gone down to Streatham, and was sitting in the Thrale pew of the little church of that place, his mind perhaps wandering away to the miserable prisoner up in London, when a letter was hurriedly brought in to him, during the service, which he read as hurriedly, and then left the church. He said afterwards, humbly, that he trusted that he should be forgiven, if he for once deserted the service of God for that of man. It would be only a Pharisee -and there was found such a Pharisee-that could bring him to task for such a dereliction.

The letter was an agitated letter, written that very morning by the miserable prisoner, and sent down by express to Johnson. It is in a tone of prostration— almost of despair. "If his Majesty," it said, piteously, "could be moved to spare me and my family the horrors and ignominy of a public death, which the public itself is solicitous to waive, and grant me in some distant, silent corner of the globe, to pass the remainder of my days in penitence and prayer, I would bless his clemency and be humbled." Johnson went home, and wrote a letter to the king—a well written document; but, like all the rest, fatally be

traying the hand that wrote, and the head that dictated. It ended in the same sentiments with which Dodd had written to Johnson, only Johnson put "to hide my guilt in some obscure corner of a foreign country," instead of that, "silent, distant corner of the globe." After all, a simple letter from the prisoner might have been more efficacious than this vicarious entreaty. Part of it ran:

66

SIR,-May it not offend your Majesty that the most miserable of men applies himself to your clemency as his last hope and last refuge from the horror and ignominy of a public execution." And he then forcibly alludes to "the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets to a death of infamy, amidst the derision of the profligate and the profane." This was skilfully adapted to appeal to

the royal mind.*

With this letter he sent a wholesome caution, which yet reflects his honest sympathy and goodness of heart.

“SIR,—I most seriously enjoin you not to let it be at all known that I have written this letter, and to return the copy to Mr. Allen in a cover to me. I hope I need not tell you that I wish it success. But do not indulge hope. Tell nobody."

He had interpreted truly and sagaciously the little signs of mercy.

But this true and manful ally went yet further.

* Boswell, in his incomparable Biography, has given a list of all Johnson's contributions to this unhappy case.