1829. J . But! 411 



wounds which you have received, and the high testimony borne to your 

 merits by the distinguished officers under whom you have served, are, 

 all of them, circumstances which give you an undoubted claim to the 

 gracious consideration of his Majesty; and the commander-in-chief would 



feel gi-eat pleasure in recommending you for promotion, hut " 



" But," exclaimed the veteran, as he folded up the letter, without 

 finishing it, and put it in his pocket, while a faint flush tinged his rough 

 soldier's cheek, " I have onlif my deserts to back me — my past services 

 to plead — and what are they when no future ones are wanted ?" 



Your only honest, upright, respectable character in the v/orld's cata- 

 logue, is he who pays what he owes. There is no nobility like the nobi- 

 lity of the purse; no roguery to be compared with that which is ragged 

 and pennyless. It will sometimes happen, however, that the man of 

 thousands lets his thousands all slip from him, while he himself slips 

 into debts which are a thousand fold greater than his means to discharge 

 them : but — there is such a thing as misfortune to account for the acci- 

 dent in his behalf who cannot plead necessity. How fares the man who 

 never had his thousand pounds, yet owes his fifty, with an ijisolvent 

 pocket? Where are the accidents and misfortunes to speak for him, 

 and open his prison door ? Alas ! there is only one tor.gue ^yhose voice 

 can be made audible, and that is a golden one ; only one answer for his 

 supplications, and that is a receipt in full. His creditor is an adept in 

 nice and subtle distinctions ; a master of metaphysical ethics. He would 

 never have adopted proceedings against him, but — he considered himself 

 ill used ; the ill usage, correctly translated, consisting simply in the fact 

 that he had not been paid ; and he would v/illingly drop the business 

 ow, but — -it is in his lawyer's hands, and he cannot interfere. This, 

 oo, requires translation, when it reads thus: — " I shall be satisfied with 

 any thing that satisfies my solicitor; and I have told my solicitor he is 

 not to be satisfied with any thing except the money." 



" Another day has passed," exclaims a wretched criminal, whose hours 

 are numbered, as he casts himself in anguish upon his bed. He has been 

 condemned to die for forgeiy ; and the day of his execution is appointed. 

 He is no common victim of offended justice — one who has always had 

 tlie halter round his neck ; and accounting every hour he lived a 

 triumph over the gallows, for v,hich he had long been ripe. He is a 

 husband and a father ; and, till the commission of the crime for which 

 his life had been declared forfeited, his name Avas high, and his credit, 

 like his name, upon the public mart, where " merchants most do con- 

 gregate." His friends deplore — his miserable family bewail — his fate. 

 It is a heavy and a Ijitter penalty, to pay down at the close of a life 

 which has stretched through half a century, for an offence that has many 

 vnitigating circumstances to soften all its darker shades. 



Tlie prayers of liis wife and children, the intercession of his friends, 

 the appeal for mercy, even from his fellow-citizens who declared him 

 guilty, have made themselves heard at the foot of the throne. — There is 

 lujjje ! When is there not for the wretched? In vain tlie tongue denies 

 licr presence : she lingers in the heart, till tliat which stills its last throb, 

 stifles her voice of promise. But " another day has passed," and there 

 are no tidings of that wliich is to determine how many days more 

 remain for the anxious supplicant in this AvorLl. To-morrow comes, 



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