Or, GENTLEMAN's Monthly Intelligencer; For MAY, 1768. 267 A Complete List of the Commons of Mr. Hamilton's fine Park described 259 261 or 13th Parliament Hunting of French King 262, Further Thoughts on Capital Punish- A French Court Entertainment 263 ments 235 264–267 238 ibid. Commodore Byron's Narrative 239 Death of a Traitor to his Country 269 State of the Controversy with the Au- Inftructions to Representives to serve thor of The Appeal, &c. 241—243 in Parliament, elected in the Year Causes of, and Remedy for, the great 1768 269-272 Mortality among Infants 243—245 Impartial Account of New PúblicaAnswer to Miro-Balkanos 245 — 247 tions 273 Myftery unfriendly to Religion 248 Wilkes's Introduction 275 Thoughts on Rom. vi. s. 249 Manners, &c. of the Turks 250-252 Marriages and Births; Deaths 253 jbid. on the Danger of Corsica 254 Promotions civil and military joid. Observations on modern Travelling 255 B-nkr-pts; course of Exchange inid, Excellent Reflections on the present Monthly Bill of Mortality ibid. Disorders, &c. 257 ibid. Parliamentary Proceedings in Ireland Stocks, Grain; Wind and Weather 234 276 bis Son 28. Remark 258 WITH A FINE PORTRAIT OF PASCAL PAOLI, General of the CORSICANS, that Gentleman. Engraved by MILLER. LONDON: Printed for R. BALDWIN, at No.47, in Pater-nofter Row;. Of whom may be had, compleat Sets, from the Year 1732, to this Time, neatly bound or ftitched, or any fingle Month to complete Sets. 21 166 269 13 15 c 95 ENE. fine 111 92 92 94 104 100 22 Sunday 15 0 28 13 15 0 '5 CHARLES CORBET T, at No. 30, facing St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street, STOCK-BROKER, who buys and fells in the Stocks by Commiffion, and tranfacts the Lottery Business as usual. 2 2 2 2 2 2 Mark Lane Exchange Batingftoke London. Henley, Worcester. Devizes. Gloucester. fiereford. Monmouth. Evesham. Farnham. Price of corn : THE LONDON MAGAZINE, For MAY, 1768. The CURATE, I. B. who wrote the account of his hardships, inferted in our Mag. for 1767, p. 601, is once more requested to call upon, or write to, Mr. Baldwin, who can inform him of fomewhat that will alleviate bis fufferings. To the AUTHOR of the LONDON MAGAZINE. SIR, May 16, 1768. OU have repeatedly obliged me by giving a place in your very valuable collection to what I have fent you from time to time on the important fubject of capital punishments. In my last (published, Nov. 1767) I took occafion to mention with pleature the reprieve of no less than fix criminals, being all that were tried and condemned for divers thefts and robberies at the lent-affizes held that year for the county where I live. And I hoped I fhould have been able to fay, that no lefs than eight convicted at the fame aflize this year, and condemned to dye, were permitted to live but was difappointed. This indeed was the cafe of five of them. The other three, (young men and fol diers, their different ages about 19, 20, and 27) were executed the 2d inftant for a rape (after a repeated refpite) near the place where the fact was committed. I fhill wave the mention of feveral things which have been fuggefted by way of alleviation, and urged in their behalf; and confider the crime of which they were found guilty, as very atrocious, and deferving a fevere punishment. But at the fame time hope I may be allowed to alk could no puniliment fufficiently fevere be thought of, and their lives fpared? In the reign of James the fecond, Mr. Tutchin who affitted the Duke of Monmouth, was fentenced to remain in prifon seven years, and once every year to be whiped through all the towns in Dorfetfhire, which would have amounted to a May, 1768. whipping about once a fortnight. Mr. Tutchin petitions the king to grant him the favour to be hanged with the rest of his fellow prifoners. Perhaps thofe who were most defirous of the death of these young men might have been fatisfied if a fomewhat fimilar (lefs rigorous) fentence had been pronounced upon them. Might they not have been doomed to receive a certain number of lashes at fixed times, confiftent with the prefervation of life; and fome visible, durable mark fet upon them to perpetuate their infamy, and prevent their defertion, whether obliged to work on the roads, or continued as foldiers, in the fervice of their country? Might not fomething of this kind have been thought fufficient without taking away their lives? Could no punishment upon earth have been deviled terrible enough? no proper correction without utter diftruction, nor any beter method of making them examples to the world than fending them out of it? Had they been continued in it, who knows but that their appearing penitence and their fubfequent good conduct might have induced their fuperiors to mitigate the tentence? The worthy clergyman who often vifited them, difcourfed and prayed with them, and administered the facrament to them, declared the fatisfaction he had in obferving the propriety of their behaviour under their unhappy circumstances; the fenfe they feemed to have of their guilt - their expreflions of penitential forrow, &c. Accordingly it is faid they delivered to the sheriff at the place of execution an addrefs (figned by all) to their fellow foldiers intimating their grief-felf indignation-the alteration of their fentiments and views of thingsgiving them good advice and intreating Gg 2 them 236 May I beg leave humbly to afk one queftion more. Though it was a heinous crime for which they fuffered, yet is there no crime to be mentioned equally fo, which paffes unpunished? They, heated with liquor, through a fudden, violent guft of unbridled luft, forced a woman.-Are there none (even of thofe called gentlemen) who, not by the fame fort of force, but with diabolical diffimulation and cruelty, deliberately contive and accomplish the ruin of the innocent and unwary, feducing and drawing them to by promifes of marriage; and when they have gained their point, inhumanly abandoning them with their offfpring; leaving them to mourn and languish under the bitter reflection on their too eafy credulity and confidence in the perfidious wretch who has deprived them of their virtue and honour, the favour and affection of parents and friends and perhaps the means of fubfiftence? Are there no inftances of this? None who, thus given up to contempt, to poverty, to complicated mileries in life, have been prompted to wish for death as their laft relief? And are not those who are chargeable with fuch black guilt justly deferving as fevere a punishment as the three young men lately executed? And yet they continue their licentious practices with impunity, wiping their mouth as if they had done no iniquity. I might on this occafion mention the liberties lately taken by a certain L-d as meriting no milder a fate than the young men aforefaid-but perhaps I have faid too much already; Though I hope, nothing that can be deemed juftly offenfive; and that, therefore you will pleafe to infert this in your next, and thus add to the obligations which are thankfully acknowledged by, Sir, Your humble fervant, HISTORY OF them to regard the words of dying men -to repent, &c.—that they may not be undone for ever. Thus they took their leave of the world. And now may it not be faid,-if they might have lived, might they not have lived to fome good purpofe? Though fincere repentance and future amendment cannot be certainly inferred from fuch impreffions in the near views of death and eternity; yet one may venture to fay, it doth not feem probable that they would ever have repeated the offence, if they had been spared, or that their future vitious conduct would have proved them unworthy of the mercy fhown them. Is there no reason then to with they had lived? lived to fuffer the punishment of their iniquity-lived to be permanent examples and monuments of justice; and to be a warning to others:-lived to give proofs of the fincerity of their repentance; lived to make all the fatisfaction in their power for the injury done; -lived to be useful members of the community and to make greatful acknowledgements and returns for the favor granted them?-But they are dead and gone, and will be foon forgotten, much fooner than if they had lived to undergo fuch a punishment as, by repetition and duration, evidently tends to renew and fix thofe impreffions, (atended with fuitable refolutions and felf-restraints) whereby the chief end of punifliments is anfwered. Doth cool, unprejudiced reafon tell us that thefe three young men were by no means fit to live; that the injury done would admit of no other reparation than their perdition; that it was abfolutely neceffary they fhould be cut off, all cut off in the prime of life, life which they had devoted to the fervice of the publick, and had refolved to venture (when called to it) in defence of the rights and liberties of their country?-The generality of your readers, Sir, I hope, will not anfwer this in the affirmative." JUSTICE and GENEROSITY; Or, the remarkable Hiftory of Sir WILBRAHAM WENTWORTH. HERE is a particular injuftice glaring, has hitherto been unnoticed, and which fo far from being cenfured is never thought culpable in the practifers This injuftice is the cuftoin which people have of poffeffing property with acquired by dishonesty; a man will readily acknowledge that his father's wealth refulted from the oppreffion of the unfortunate, but he will not refund a fin gle 1.768. SIR WILBRAHAM WENTWORTH gle fhilling to the lawful owners when it defcends into his own hands; -on the contrary, though he is convinced it is in equity the actual right of another, he thinks he may retain it without the leaft fhadow of reproach, and the world is fo extremely polite that while it perhaps execrates the memory of the firft fpoiler, it compliments the latter with the reputation of unquestionable probity to elucidate this pofition clearly and to let my readers fee in what manner people fhould act, when they are made the heirs of ill gotten fortunes fhall be the bufinels of the following little narrative. Sir John Wentworth was a younger brother of family, who by the death of an uncle in Oxfordshire became poffeffed of a title, but of nothing elfe; the baronet, whom he fucceeded in honour had it in his power to bequeath every foot of his eftate, as he thought proper, and as he never entertained any cordial affction for Sir John, he left it to a more diftant relation. This was rather an unfortu nate circumftance for Sir John, whofe finances were not in a very flourishing fituation-however as his perfon was handfome, his addrefs elegant, and his education finished, he did not quite defpair of obtaining a fortune fomewhat fuitable to his rank-Nor was our baronet's expctations altogether without reafon to the qualities we have already defcribed Sir John, added a deep diffimulation, and a fafcinating plaufa bility he knev mankind well, and was inclined upon every occafion to profit by the weakness or generofity of his acquaintance, nor was an oppportunity long wanting to gratify his avarice-a young widow who had been left in the poffeflion of a large eftate by the last will of a doating husband, faw Sir John by accident at Bath, liked, and married him; as love is feldom accompanied by prudence, fhe would by no means lock up her fortune from the man he had honoured with her perfon. 'Tis true fhe had a daughter by her former hufband; but what of that? She was in love with her prefent,-and we generally believe those people are really worthy of our regard, whom we eagerly with to deferve it:-Befides this, Mifs Milmour her daughter had ten thousand pounds fettled on her by her father's will, which Lady Wentworth thought a very handfome provifion; and it was fo in reality, her mother had not been her guardian, 237 and this guardian's fate entirely at the difpofal of Sir John. It is unnecessary to dwell minutely upon particulars; our baronet had married totally from interefted motives, and as we have already obferved he was not the most confcientious of mankind, he was not therefore united two years to his lady till he got poffeffion of Mifs Milmour's fortune, and in less than two years after both the mother and the daughter were negligently left at a miferably old feat above two hundred miles from the capital, where Lady Wentworth after undergoing every fpecies of mortification, and knowing that the man whom he loved to diftraction publickly cohabited with another woman, died of a broken heart; leaving Mifs Milmour wholly dependant on the generofity of a wretch whom the herself had found to be utterly divested not only of fentiment, but fhame, and not only of gratitude but of honesty. Mifs Milmour's relations in this exi-. gence took the young lady home, and having in vain applied to Sir John for her fortune, endeavoured to recover it by law; but unhappily juftice is not always fuccefsful; the glorious uncertainty of the courts fatigued them for many years, and in the end totally deceived their expectations. This greatly cooled the affections of the young lady's friends, whofe regard had for fome time been gradually declining, from the unpromifing appearance of affairs, and she was at laft induced from motives of prudence as well as tenderness, to throw herself into the arms of a worthy young, fellow who had a company in a marching regiment, and to whom he was rendered additionally dear, by the inelancholy turn in her circumstances. All this time it must be confeffed the world made very free with Sir John Wentworth's character; they exclaimed at his inhumanity in the very moment they acknowledged his politeness, and though the law had pronounced in his favour, the decifion by no means removed the reflections which were eternally thrown upon his character.-But though his name was frequently mentioned with abhorrence, his company was avoided; and thofe who acknowledged. the cruelty of his disposition, were the firft to give him invitations, and though they could fay nothing in favour of his principles, they were always ready to declare that he was infinitely agreeable: never death |