diamond ear-rings, a gold watch set with diamonds, a chain and other articles, and gave him a draft for seven hundred and sixty pounds, signed Lord Tankerville, and payable to Lord Massey. The note was refused; be returned to the prisoner, and found him gone.

This criminal, whose exploits rendered him famous in the annals of fraud and gallantry, was born in America: his father was there kill. ed, and he had a commission given him; but, living extravagantly, sold it and came to England, where, sometimes pretending to be Lord Massey, the Duke of Ormond, &c. he defrauded noblemen, gentlemen, bankers, &c. of various sums of money, to a large amount; until the hand of Justice stopped his career of wickedness.

His person was handsome, his air and mien genteel; and happy would it have been for himself, and beneficial to the public, had he employed his good sense in honest pursuits. He was twenty-five years old.

Whilst under sentence of death, being sensible of his approaching fate, he prepared to meet it like a man and a Christian. Being in no want of money, he behaved to his fellow-prisoners in the most charitable manner.

He was tried in December sessions, 1792, and executed February 13, 1793.

How often do we see, as in the case of Griffin, that the best talents and endowments are abused to the basest purposes! How much less pains would it cost many persons to live comfortably, and with credit, than they take to become profligates, live miserable, and die disgracefully!

As a specimen of poetic talents, we copy the following soliloquy, said to have been found in Griffin's cell after his execution:

said, was to be attributed to our oppressive taxes. It was high time for the people of this country to stand forward and assert their rights. He made mention of the national debt he denied that any part of it was paid off; it was only like taking money out of one pocket, and patting it into another. He said his majesty had no more right to the throne than the Stuarts, if he did not maintain the laws and established rules of the country. He urged that the revolution in France was wisely calculated for spreading the Gospel through twenty-five millions of people.

The defendant was also indicted and convicted, at the same time, for preaching at Plymouth another seditious sermon, on the 18th of November, 1792. He took his text from Romans xiii. 12. viz. The night is far spent, the day is at hand let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.' In the course of this discourse the defendant introduced several strong observations.

After the evidence on both sides had been heard, the jury, without hesitation, found the defendant guilty.

Judgment having been prayed by the king's counsel, Mr. Justice Ashurst thus addressed the defendant:- William Winterbottom, you have been found guilty of preaching two seditious and atrocious sermons. The first act of this daring profligacy you committed on the 5th of November, and the second on the 18th of the same month. It has been stated that you are a dissenting preacher: of what sect of religion you are I know not; but I can collect from your preaching that you are not at all connected with the Christian religion; for the Christian religion,

after first regarding the duty to God, teaches and inspires love for, and obedience to, the established government; but the tendency d your doctrine is to overturn al order, religion, morality, and government, and to introduce anarchy and confusion.

Your doctrine goes to the abuse of that toleration, by which it is meant that every man may be at liberty to reverence God in the way that his conscience may dictate But your conscience dictates no such principles; therefore the means that you have taken is a double aggravation of your guilt, and merits a two-fold punishment. In one part : of your sermon you approve of the revolution in France.

'As to your first proposition, it is sufficient that the pernicious designs intended to have been executed are frustrated.

'As to your second opicion, that the French revolution would open the eyes of the people of England, there I agree with you-it does open the eyes of the people-it has taken the veil from off the backnied system of liberty and equality.

All practical equality consists in ・ the affording equal protection. This chimerical project has been tried in a neighbouring nation, the lamentable effects of which will be handed down with sorrow to the latest gencration. This system, which has been tried, must press upon the minds of men, and must operate more forcibly than a volume of arguments.

As to your second proposition, it is impossible to be justified: you have alleged that the present form of government is a scourge on the people; but that the yoke of bondage will be soon broken; that persecution is near its end; and that every man will soon have to boast of equality.

'As to your saying that the French revolution will open the eyes of the people, I trust it will also open your eyes, and be a Scourge to those who wish to introduce anarchy and confusion.

This Court, having taken the malignity of your offence into their serious consideration, do consequently order and adjudge that for your first offence you pay a fine of one hundred pounds to the king, and that you be imprisoned in the New Prison, Clerkenwell, in the county of Middlesex, for the term of two years; and that for your second offence you pay a fine of one hundred pounds to the king, and be imprisoned in the New Prison, Clerkenwell, for the term of two years, to be computed after the expiration of your first imprisonment; and that at the end of your imprisonment you give security for your good behaviour for the term of

five years, yourself in five hundred pounds, and two sureties in two hundred and fifty pounds each.'

now.

The defendant then wished to address the Court, but Lord Kenyon said, The Court cannot hear you It would have been the duty of the Court to have heard you, if you had offered any thing before sentence was passed: notwithstanding, the source of mercy is open to you.'

The defendant was immediately taken into custody.

Itinerant declaimers from the pulpit to ignorant auditors are, when they turn politicians, not only a nuisance to society, but sometimes dangerous to the state. Let preachers of the gospel stick to their creed; when they dare to dabble in politics, with which they have no business, their punishment cannot excite much regret.

stances:

A Dutch schooner, com-mauded by Captain Smyth, took a supply of provisions to the settlement at Sydney Cove. A convict, named Briant, and who was married to the prisoner Mary Briant, persuaded Captain Smyth to let him have his sixoared boat, with an old lug-sail, a quadrant, and compass, for which he paid him what money he had, and some he collected among those to whom he intrusted his design; for the convicts having little use for the money with which their friends had supplied them, on sailing from this country, had most of it by them. Captain Symth gave him

one hundred pounds of rice, and fourteen pounds of pork: they pur chased of a convict, who was baker to the colony, one hundred pounds of flour, at the rate of two shillings and sixpence, and one shilling and sixpence per pound, which, with ten gallons of water, was all the provisions they took on board; and, at ten at night, on the 28th of March, 1791, William Briant, with his wife and two children, the one three years and the other one year old, the other three prisoners, Samuel Bird, James Cox, and William Martin, embarked in this open boat to sail to the island of Timor, which, by the nearest run, is upward of one thousand three hundred miles from the place of their embarkation; but, by the course

they were forced to take, it was impossible for them to form an idea what distance they might have to run, or what dangers, independent of those of the sea, they might have to encounter; added to this, the monsoon had just set in, and the wind was contrary. Under these circumstances they rather chose to risk their lives on the sea, than drag out a miscrable existence on an inhospitable shore. They were forced to keep along the coast, as much as they could, for the convenience of procuring supplies of fresh water; and on these occasions, and when the weather was extremely tempestuous, they would sometimes sleep on shore, hauling their boat on the land. The savage natives, wherever they put on shore, came down, in numbers, to murder them. They now found two old muskets, and a small quantity of powder, which Captain Smyth had given them, particularly serviceable, by firing over the heads of these multitudes, on which they ran off with great precipitation; but they were always forced to keep a strict watch. In lat. 26. 27. they discovered a small uninhabited island: here was plenty of turtles, that proved a great relief to them; but they were very near being lost in landing. On this island they dried as much turtle as they could carry, which lasted them ten days. During the first five weeks of their voyage they had continual rains; and being obliged to throw overboard all their wearing apparel, &c. were for that time continually wet. They were once eight days out of sight of land, and after surmounting infinite hardships and dangers, they landed, on the 5th of June, 1791, at Cupang, on the island of Timor, where the Dutch have a settlement; having

sailed considerably more than five thousand miles, and been ten weeks all but one day in performing this voyage. At Cupang they informed the governor, that they had be longed to an English ship, which was wrecked on her passage to New South Wales. The governor treated them with great humanity, but at length overheard a conversation among them, by which he discovered that they were convicts, who had escaped from the colony in New South Wales.

On the 29th of August, 1791, the Pandora, of twenty guns, Captain Edwards, was wrecked on a reef of rocks near New South Wales. The captain, and those of the crew who were saved, got to Cupang in their boats, when the governor gave the captain an account of the eleven persons he had there, and of the conversation he had overheard.

The captain took them with him to Batavia, where William Briant and his eldest child died. The rest were put on board a Dutch ship, in which Captain Edwards sailed with them, for the Cape of Good Hope. On their passage to the Cape, James Cox fell overboard and was drowned, and Samuel Bird and William Martin died. At the Cape, Captain Edwards delivered the survivors to Captain Parker, of the Gorgon, and they sailed with him for England. In their passage home, the younger child of Mary Briant died.

Their trial took place, at the Old Bailey, on the 8th of July, 1792, when the Court ordered them to remain on their former sentence, until they should be discharged by the course of law. This lenient treatment was in consequence of the great suffering they had endured, the full punishment for such an offence being death.