I am persuaded, you will not refuse this Letter a reading, since the principal Subject of it is Mercy: I would not have took this Liberty with your Lordship, was I not throughly convinced that your Virtue is equal to your Wisdom, and that you are always ready to exert both in a proper Cause. I know, for I have experienced it, that you have a Heart which can commiserate the Misfortunes of Man, and that you are ever willing to lend a Hand to the sinking Wretch. What I now write is with the greatest Confusion of Spirits, and with the tenderest Sentiments of Humanity for two unhappy Gentlemen, one of which is my Friend; my Friend, my Lord, just on the Brink of suffering an ignominious Death. Imagine the Tumult of my Soul, when the dreadful Idea is before me: But Friendship is not the chief Motive of my Concern for him; he is a Man of Virtue and of Honour, sufficient Recommendations for your Lordship to intercede for him. Blot out the unhappy Moment which was the Source of his present Calamity, and he will appear unsullied in either; nor will that appear so black, if Murder in any Case may be extenuated; when we consider the Evidences who cast him; three Women, my Lord, who have since contradicted what before they had sworn; the other Evidence, a Man, by Report of no amiable Character; but who are said to have most grosly misrepresented the Fact, and to have industriously spread that Misrepresentation: But my Intention is not to prove innocent whom the Law has found guilty; but to submit the two distressful Gentlemen, who now lie under Sentence of Death, as Objects of the Royal Mercy. When the Law has found guilty one or more Persons, whom it is consistent with Virtue and Wisdom to save, it is the blessed Privilege of the Sovereign to turn the Course of the Law, and bid the afflicted live. The Reputations of Mr. _Savage_ and Mr. _Gregory_ have been always clear; nor are they in any Action of their Lives to be lamented by their Friends but on this melancholly Occasion. The first I have known and conversed with several Years, and can therefore more fully speak him: I have discovered in him a Mind uncapable of Evil; I have beheld him sigh for the distressed, when more distressed himself; I have seen him give that Relief to others, which not long before he has in some degree wanted. He is so far from a litigious Man, that he was always more ready to stifle the Remembrance of an Injury than to resent it. Much more could I say of his virtuous Qualities, without swerving the least from Truth; but as his Friends, which are many, are as sensible of them as my self, I doubt not but they will be as ready to declare them as I am, who can make the most solemn Appeal to Heaven, that I have seen repeated Instances of every one of these Virtues, and