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there might have been some secret hope sustaining them. The convulsive clinging to life, so common to all of us, would now, perhaps, be more palpably exhibited.

Entering their cells, I found them, as I feared, stunned by the blow which had now fallen on them, and almost overpowered by mental and bodily exhaustion. A few remarks about the trial were at length made by them; and from that moment I never heard them refer to it again. There was no bitterness of spirit against the witnesses, no expression of hostility toward the soldiers, no equivocation in any explanation they gave. They solemnly denied. many of the statements made against them; but nevertheless the broad fact remained, that they were guilty of an attempt to violently seize the vessel, and it was useless debating on minor considerations.

In the mean time, without their knowledge, petitions were prepared and forwarded to the judges, the governor, and executive council. In them were stated various mitigatory facts in their favor; and the meliorated character of the criminal code at home was also strongly urged. Every attention was paid to these addresses, following each other to the last moment. But all was in vain. The council sat, and determined that five of the men should be hanged

on the following Tuesday. Whelan, who could have no previous knowledge of a plan to seize the vessel, together with Woolfe, was spared. The remaining four were to suffer. The painful office of communicating this final intelligence to these men was intrusted to me, and they listened to the announcement not without deep feeling, but still with composure.

It would be very painful for me to dwell on the closing scene. The unhappy and guilty men were attended by the zealous chaplain of the jail, whose earnest exhortations and instructions they most gratefully received. The light of truth shone clearly on the past, and they felt that their manifold lapses from the path of virtue had been the original cause of the complicated misery they had endured. They entreated forgiveness of all against whom they had offended, and in the last words to their friends were uttered grateful remembrances to Captain Maconochie, his family, and others. At the place of execution, they behaved with fortitude and a composure befitting the solemnity of the occasion. Having retired from attendance upon them in their last moments, I was startled from the painful stupor which succeeded in my own mind, by the loud and heavy bound of the drop as it fell, and told me that their spirits had gone to God who gave them.

Our main object in laying the foregoing narrative before the world in its present shape, is to impress those who may be tottering on the verge of crime with the danger of their situation to show them that a course of error is a course of misery, ending in consequences the most afflicting.

It may be seen from the history of the unhappy men before us, that transportation is at the best equivalent to going into slavery—that the convict loses, for the time, his civil rights. Torn from his family, his home, and his country, he is placed at the disposal of the crown and its functionaries; can be put to any kind of labor, however repugnant to his feelings; dressed in the most degrading apparel; chained like a wild beast if refractory; and on the commission of any new offense while in this state of servitude, he is liable to fresh punishment by transportation to such penal settlements as Norfolk Island. It might almost be said that no man in his senses would voluntarily commit crimes which would expose him to the risk of so terrible an infliction as that of transportation even for the limited period of seven years. But, alas! men who have entered on a course of error, forgetful of every duty which they owe to themselves and society, can scarcely be said to be in possession of a sound mind; and they go on floundering

from one degree of vice to another, till brought into the condition of transported and personallyenslaved convicts. Should the present narrative fall accidentally into the hands of individuals. who are in danger of falling into a course of vice, we would hope that it will help to restrain them. The unfortunate men whose death has been recorded were once as they are; they went over the golden line of honor and duty-and behold the consequences; a short life of hardship, misery, and a violent and ignominious death.

IV.

M. de la Tude in the Bastile.

F the numerous tales related of the incar

OF

ceration of real or pretended criminals in the Bastile and other state-prisons of France during the principal part of last century, none are so remarkable or so affecting, none so much calculated to rouse feelings of indignation in the bosom of the philanthropist, as that told by M. de la Tude, in the published memoirs of his life. It appears that this gentleman, while no more than twenty-three years of age, and when residing and pursuing his studies in Paris, fell under the displeasure of Madame de Pompadour, a potent court favorite during the reign of Louis XV, and by her orders, enforced probably through the medium of a lettre de cachet, was seized, and, without form of trial or accusation, committed to the Bastile. This event took place on the 1st of May, 1749; and from that date commences the history of the sufferings and attempts to escape of this unfortunate and enterprising individual, whose memoirs are only

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