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hte £ g& , and ass 6 n £ 6 F the best anrd Wisest men whbm their country has £ ver produced , and of whose pi £ ty it will be sufficient praise to say that frg ^ vasalmosta Catholic , —he strenuously exerted himself to procure the pardon of this unfortunate nisln , oh the ' ground
tfrat the punishment exceeded the ia ^ sufe ^ of the offence , and that the Jffeibf the offender migrht usefully be pas&ed in retirefhent antt penitence . Thousands who had been benefited by his preaching petitioned that nm&rcy might be shewn him , and the Queen herself interceded , but in vain .
Daring the interval between his trial and his execution , he wrote a long poem , entitled Prison Thoughts ; a fair more extraordinary effort of mind than the poem of Villon , composed under si-. milar circumstances , for which , in an
age of less humanity , the life of the author was spared . Had the punishment of Dr . Dod'd been proportioned to his offence , he would have been no object of pity ; but when he suffered the same death as a felon or a
murderer , compassion overpowered the sense of his . guilt , and the people universally regarded hirh as the victim of - a Taw inordinately rigorous . It was long believed that his life had beert preserved by connivance of the executioner ; that a waxen figure had been buried in his stead , and that he had
been conveyed over to the C ontin , ent . More persons have suffered for this offence since the law has been enacted than for any other crime . In all other cases palliative circumstances are allowed their due weight ; this aloue is the sin for which there is no remission .
No allowance is made for the pressure of want , for the temptation which the facility of the fraud holds out , nor for the dif $ erence . betweeii offences against natural or against political law . More merciless than Draco , or than those
inquisitors who are never mentioned in this country without an abhorrent expression of real or affected huma ^ nity , the commercial legislators of England are satisfied with nothing but the life of the offender who sins against
the Bank , which is their Holy of Holies . They sacrificed for this offence one of the ; ablest engravers in the kingdom ^ the inventor of the dotted or chalk engraving . A mechanic has lately suffered \ vhp had made a machine to go without horses , and proved its suc-
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cess by travelling in it himself about forty leagues . A iiran of resp «* cta : b ! e family and unblemished conduct has just heen executed in Ireland , because , when reduced by unavoidable misfortunes to the utmost distress , he committed a forgery to relieve his family From absolute w&nt .
9 * Misetccbfe Condition of the English Poor . The beadsman at the convent door receives a blessing Wrth his pittance , but the poor man here is made to feel
his poverty as a reproach ; his scanty relief is b £ sto \ ved ungraciously , and ungraciously received ; there is neither charity in him that gives , nor gratitude in him that takes . Nor is this
the worst evil : as each parish is bound to provide for its own poor , an endless source of oppression and litigation arises froTn the necessity of keeping out all persons likely to become chargeable . We talk of the liberty of the English , and they talk of their
own liberty ; but there is no liberty in England for the poor . They are no longer sold with the soil , it is true ; but they cannot quit the soil , if there be any probability or suspicion that age or infirmity may disable them . If in such a case they endeavour to remove to some situation where tliey hope more easily to maintain
themselves , where Work is more plentiful , or provisions cheaper , thfc overseers are alarmed , the intruder is appre * - rten-ded as if he were a criminal , and sent back to his own parish . Wherever a pauper dies , that parish must be at the cost of his funeral : instances
therefore have not be ^ en wanting , of wretches in the last stage of disease having been hurried away in an open cart upon straw , and dying upon the road . Nay , even woriieh in the very pains of labour have been driven out ,
and have perished by the way-side , because the birth-place of the child would be its parish . Such acts do not pass without reprehension ; but no adequate punishment can be inflicted , and the root of the evil lies in the laws .
When volunteer forces were raised over the kingdom , the poor were excluded ; it was nfcft thought safe to trust them with arms . But the peasantry ai * e and duglit to be ,, thfc strength bf every cduntry ; and woe to that country where the peasantry and the poor are the same !
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& 53 T . The Sfytintortfrf Letters from England
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1817, page 352, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2465/page/32/
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