others
who have frugally provided for the supply of life, in order to indulge
their own wicked inclinations, then indeed the Law of society interposes
generally before the Law of Nature, and cuts off with a sudden and
ignominious death those who would otherwise probably have fallen by the
fruits of their own sins.

This malefactor, John Price, was one of these wretched people who act as
if they thought life was given them only to commit wickedness and
satiate their several appetites with gross impurities, without
considering how far they offend either against the institutions of God
or the laws of the land. It does not appear that this fellow ever
followed any employment that looked like honesty, except when he was at
sea. The terrors of a sick-bed alarmed even a conscience so hardened as
Price's, and the effects of an ill-spent life appeared so plainly in the
weak condition he found himself in, that he made, as he afterwards
owned, the most solemn vows of amendment, if through the favour of
Providence he recovered his former health. To this he was by the
goodness of God restored, but the resolutions he made on that condition
were totally forgotten. As soon as he returned home, he sought afresh
the company of those loose women and those abandoned wretches who by the
inconveniences into which they had formerly led him, had obliged him to
seek for shelter by a long voyage at sea.

What little money he had received when the ship was paid off, was
quickly lavished away, so that on the 11th of August, 1725, he with two
others named Cliffe and Sparks, undertook, after having well weighed the
attempt, to enter the house of the Duke of Leeds by moving the sash, and
so plunder it of what was to be got. By their assistance Cliffe got in
at the window, and afterwards handed out a cloak, hat, and other things
to his companions Sparks and Price, but they were all immediately
apprehended. Cliffe made an information by which he discovered the whole
fact, and it was fully proved by Mr. Bealin that Price, when first
apprehended, owned that he had been with Cliffe and Sparks. Upon the
whole the jury found him guilty, upon which he freely acknowledged the
justice of their verdict at the bar.

All the time he lay under conviction he behaved himself as a person
convinced of his own unworthiness of life, and therefore repined not at
the justice of that sentence which condemned him to death, though in his
behaviour before his trial there h