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280 the first law of Nature, and you hang him, not because he is guilty, but because you have left him naked and starving!—(A murmur among the mob below, with great difficulty silenced.)—One thing only I will add, and that not to move your mercy. No, nor to invest my fate with an idle and momentary interest; but because there are some persons in this world who have not known me as the criminal who stands before you, and whom the tidings of my fate may hereafter reach; and I would not have those persons view me in blacker colours than I deserve. Among all the rumours, Gentlemen, that have reached you, through all the tales and fables kindled from my unhappy notoriety, and my approaching doom, I put it to you, if you have heard that I have committed one sanguinary action, or one ruinous and deliberate fraud? You have heard that I have lived by the plunder of the rich,—I do not deny the charge. From the grinding of the poor, the habitual overreaching, or the systematic pilfering of my neighbours, my conscience is as free as it is from the charge of cruelty and bloodshed. Those errors I leave to honest mediocrity or virtuous exertion! You may, perhaps,