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ness, she told him that she was with child by me, and that I had poisoned her, under pretence of preserving her reputation.

Whether she made this declaration, or only confessed the truth, and her father to revenge the injury had forged the rest, cannot now be known; but the coroner having been summoned, and the body viewed, and found to have been pregnant, with many marks of a violent and uncommon disorder, a verdict of wilful murder was brought in against me; and I was committed to the county-gaol.

As the judges were then upon the circuit, I was within less than a fortnight convicted and condemned by the zeal of the jury, whose passions had been so greatly inflamed by the enormity of the crime with which I had been charged, that they were rather willing that I should suffer being innocent, than that I should escape being guilty; but it appearing to the judge in the course of the trial, that murder was not intended, he reprieved me before he left the town.

I might now have redeemed the time, and, awakened to a sense of my folly and my guilt; might have made some reparation to mankind for the injury which I had done to society; and endeavoured to rekindle some spark of hope in my own breast by repentance and devotion. But alas! in the first transports of my mind, upon so sudden and unexpected a calamity, the fear of death yielded to the fea of infamy, and I swallowed poison: the excess of my desperation hindered its immediate effect; for, as I took too much, great part of it was thrown up, and only such a quantity remained behind as was sufficient to insure my destruction, and yet leave me time to contemplate the horrors of the gulph into which I am sinking.

In this deplorable situation I have been visited by the surgeon who was the immediate instrument of my misfortune, and the philosopher who directed my studies: but these are friends who only rouse me to

keener sensibility, and inflict upon me more exquisite torment. They reproach me with folly and upbraid me with cowardice; they tell me too, that the fear of death has made me regret the errors of superstition; but what would I now give for those erroneous hopes, and that credulous simplicity which, though I have been taught to despise them, would sustain me in the tremendous hour that approaches, and avert from my last agony the horrors of despair!

I have indeed a visitor of another kind, the good old man who first taught me to frame a prayer, and first animated me with the hope of heaven; but he can only lament with me that this hope will not return, and that I can pray with confidence no more: he cannot by a sudden miracle re-establish the principles which I have subverted. My mind is all doubt, and terror, and confusion; I know nothing but that I have rendered ineffectual the clemency of my judge, that the approach of death is swift and inevitable, and that either the shades of everlasting night, or the gleams of unquenchable fire are at hand. My soul in vain shrinks backward: I grow giddy with the thought; the next moment is distraction!....Farewell.

OPSINOUS.

No. XV. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26.

Inventum medicina meum est.

Med'cine is mine.

OVID.

DRYDEN.

AS no man more abhors the maxim which affirms the lawfulness of doing evil to produce good than myself, I shall spare no falsehood, because it has been rendered subservient to political purposes, nor concur in the deception of mankind, though for the service of the state.

When the public liberty has been thought in so much danger as to make it necessary to expose life in its defence, we have been told that life is the inferior blessing; that death is more eligible than slavery; and that to hold the contrary opinion, is not only absurd but infamous.

This however, whether it is the rant of enthusiasm or the insinuation of cunning, contradicts the voice of reason, and the general consent of mankind. The far greater part of the human species are confessed to live in a state of slavish subjection; and there is scarce any part of the globe where that which an Englishman calls liberty, is to be found: and yet it does not appear that there is any place in which the attachment to life is dissolved, or that despotism and tyranny ever provoked suicide to depopulate their dominions. It may be said, that wretches who have never been free, suffer patiently because they are strangers to enjoyment; but it must be remembered, that our heroes of liberty, whether Bucks or Bloods, or of whatever other denomination, when by some creditor of slavish principles they have been locked up in a prison, never yet petitioned to be hanged.

But though to every individual, life is of greater value than liberty; yet health and ease are of greater value than life. Though jollity may sometimes be found in the cell of a prisoner, it never enters the chambers of the sick: over pain and sickness, the sweetness of music, the sprightliness of humour, and the delicacies of luxury, have no power. Without health life is misery; and death, as it removes positive evil, is at least a negative good. Among the many advantages, therefore, which are confessed to be peculiar to Great-Britain, the highest surely is the number of medicines that are dispersed in this metropolis; medicines which infallibly remove every disease by which the value of life is annihilated, and death rendered a blessing.

It has been observed by naturalists, that every climate produces plants, peculiarly adapted to remove its peculiar diseases; and by moralists, that good and evil are universally distributed with an equal hand. My subject affords a remarkable instance of the truth of these observations: for without this extraordinary interposition of medical power, we should not only be the most loathsome, debilitated, and diseased of all mortals, but our country would soon become desolate, or, what is worse, a province to France.

Of this no doubt will remain, if it be considered that the medicines, from which we are told almost every noble family in the kingdom has received benefit, are such as invigorate, cleanse, and beautify; for if our nobility are impotent, loathsome, and hideous, in what condition are those who are exposed to the vicissitudes of wet and dry, and cold and heat, which in this climate are sudden and frequent ? In what condition are those who sweat at the furnace, or delve in the mine, who draw in pestilential fumes at every breath, and admit an enemy to life at every pore? If a being, whose perspicacity could discover effects yet slum. bering in their causes, could perceive the future

peers of this realm corked close in a vial, or rolled up in a pill; or if, while yet more distant, they would appear rising in the vapour of an alembic, or agitated in the vortex of a mortar; from whence must we expect those who should hereafter supply the fleet, the manufactory, or the field?

But the good that would flow in a thousand streams to the community from these fountains of health, and vigour, and beauty, is in some degree intercepted, by the envy or folly of persons who have, at a great expence, crowded the city with buildings, called Hospitals, in which those who have been long taught to mangle the dead, practise the same horrid arts upon the living; and where a cancer or a gangrene produce the amputation of a limb, though a cure for the cancer might have been purchased in Fleet-street for a shilling, and a powder that instantly stops the progress of gangrene, upon Tower-Hill, for sixpence. In hospitals, diseases are not cured, but rendered incurable : and though of this the public has been often advertised by Mr. Robert Ratsey, who gives advice to the poor in Billiter-Lane; yet hospitals are still filled, and new donations are made. Mr. Ratsey has indeed himself contributed to this evil; for he promises to cure even those who have been thus rendered incurable: a resource, therefore, is still left, and the vulgar will be encouraged to throw themselves into an hospital, in compliance with their prejudices, by reflecting that after all, they can make the experiment which ought to have been their first choice.

I would not be thought to dictate to the legislature ; but I think that all persons, especially this gentleman, should be prohibited from curing these incurable patients by act of parliament; though I hope that he will, after this notice, restrain the first ardour of his benevolence, by reflecting that a conduct which may be mercy to one, may be cruelty to many; and that in his future advertisements this dangerous promise will not be repeated.

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