s; and the Court plainly acquaints
the felon that if, in breach of his agreement, he shall so return, that
in such case the contract shall be deemed void, and the capital
punishment shall again take place. To say, then, that a person who
enters into an agreement like this, and is perfectly acquainted with its
conditions, knowing that no less than his life must be forfeited by the
breach of them, and yet wilfully breaks them, to say that such a person
as this is guilty of no offence, must in the opinion of every person of
common understanding be the greatest absurdity that can be asserted; and
to call that severity which only is the Law's taking its forfeit, is a
very great impropriety, and proceeds from a foolish and unreasonable
compassion. This I think so plain that nothing but prepossession or
stupidity can hinder people from comprehending it.

As to Whalebone, when death approached, he laid aside all these excuses
and applied himself to what was much more material, the making a proper
use of that little time which yet remained for repentance. He
acknowledged all the crimes which he had committed in the former part of
his life, and the justice of his sentence by which he had been condemned
to transportation; and having warned the people at his execution to
avoid of all things being led into ill company, he suffered with much
seeming penitence, together with the afore-mentioned malefactors, at
Tyburn, being then about thirty-eight years of age.

The Life of JAMES LITTLE, a Footpad and Highwayman

James Little was a person descended from parents very honest and
industrious, though of small fortune. They bred him up with all the care
they were able, and when he came to a fit age put him out to an honest
employment. But in his youth having taken peculiar fancy to his father's
profession of a painter, he thereto attained in so great a degree as to
be able to earn twelve or fifteen shillings in a week, when he thought
fit to work hard. But that was very seldom, and he soon contracted such
a hatred to working at all that associating with some wild young
fellows, he kept himself continually drunk and mad, not caring what he
did for money, so long as he supplied himself with enough to procure
himself liquor.

Amongst the rest of those debauched persons with whom he conversed there
was especially one Sandford, with whom he was peculiarly intimate. This
fellow was a soldier, of a rude, loose disposition, who took a