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STIRLING CASTLE, 28th July, 1820.

DEAR SISTER,-I now write a few words to you. My situation is no doubt painful to you; but you must not grieve for me as one that hath no hope, for I have found more comfort in the dungeon than ever I found in this world. Although I am under the rod of affliction, God in his mercy has sent grace to support me. Although man be the instrument that afflicts me, it has a two-fold meaning— man for his pleasure-and God for his justice and my good. Man will be brought to judgment for what he does to me. I pray that God may enable me to forgive them freely.

Ah! my loved sister, why all this care for me?—to a life so lostso totally undone: yet not doubting for mercy from His grace, who bled on the cross for all those who seek him with their whole hearts. Oh! may each breath, while God that breath shall spare to me, be yours in gratitude, and instant in prayer. Mankind shall learn by

my

sad story, your kind concern for me.

May the Lord Jesus inspire us all with the sacred fire of his grace. In the arms of his free grace and mercy, may we trust our souls and our bodies, for He alone is able to keep them. Glory be to His name, for ever and ever. Amen. My kind love to all inquiring friends. Your affectionate brother,

JOHN BAIRD.

The following is the last one he wrote to his faithful friend Mr. Daniel Taylor of Kilsyth, who occasionally wrote some scraps of local poetry in his day!-

STIRLING CASTLE, 4th Sept., 1820.

Dear Friend, I take this opportunity of sending you my long and last farewell. On Friday, I hope to me made immortal. Although man may mangle this body, yet blessed be God, he has kept the most noble part of it in his own hand. I do not mean to say anything about them who have been so sore against me: for I have made it my study to forget and forgive all men any wrong they have done to me. I received your kind and welcome letter. It cheered my heart to think you will go so far to see my grave; and it gave me some consolation to say, you will write my Dirge. All this you have said, and I hope you will do. It gives me no small concern to think that any

person blamed you concerning me-that I could never do. I look upon you still as my trusty friend; but you know men are oft blamed when they are not deserving of it. I hope that you will let all animosity cease, and let love and harmony abound, is the sincere wish of your dying friend.

"Let troubles rise and tyrant's rage,

And days of darkness fall; But those that wait upon the Lord, Shall more than conquer all." If God be for us, who can stand against us? dying friend, a martyr to the cause of liberty. protect you and yours. Give my kind love to all friends of liberty.— Yours, JOHN BAIRD.

No more from your May the grace of God

And there was added to the above, this significant note from Hardie:

DEAR SIR,-This comes from a hand you never saw, to the best of my knowledge-from a hand that in a few days or hours must mingle with its native dust. Hard is our fate, my dear unknown friend; yet I resign my life without the least reluctance. I die a martyr,— "Firm to the cause, like a magnet to its pole,

With undaunted spirit and unshaken soul."

My dear friend, I again bid you farewell; and I hope you will keep in your remembrance the cause for which Baird and Hardie, and Cleland, died on the scaffold. No more-farewell!

ANDREW HARDIE.

P.S.-Since writing this, I am happy to announce that Cleland has got a respite.

A. H.

We think we shall in a subsequent page or two, show how well Mr. Daniel Taylor, of Kilsyth, to whom the above letter was addressed, performed the duty he undertook to do, by some original verses he was pleased to commit to us many years ago, forming the "Dirge" which his dying friend so pathetically enjoined him to make, and which we are not ashamed to say, we have again recently perused with some edification and drops of awakened and soothing comfort.

We give the following from an eye-witness:"On the Wednesday, before their execution on Friday, amid the circle of his weeping family-an aged father of fourscore, three sisters, two brothers, and two brothersin-law, John Baird, detailed at considerable length, and with the utmost simplicity, calmness, and affection, his feelings, and his hopes and again beseeched them when they returned home, not to mourn for him, but rather to return thanks to Almighty God for his great goodness in sustaining him under such trials. To those of his relations who had children, he urged upon them the propriety of showing them a good example in early life, and that they might all live so as to be ready to die at a moment's notice; for although, he observed, the period of his existence was fixed upon the earth, they knew not the day nor the hour when their own great change would come.

"These were his words; and while every one in his condemned cell was convulsed and bewailing, and sobbing with tears, he himself was calm and collected, and continued to address them in the most soothing tone and manner. One circumstance alone seemed to overpower him for a few moments. His venerable father, whom he had not seen since the morning of the day before he was taken prisoner at Bonnymuir, was bowed down on his knees near him in that cell at this last adieu. When they came to embrace and to shake hands with each other for the last time, the doomed prisoner snatched from his pocket, in which he had still been permitted to retain it, a handsome horn snuff-box, mounted with silver, and with a look which may be imagined but not described, he placed it in the trembling hands of his poor frail agonized father, saying, "Dear father, please accept this from me. You will perhaps look at it when you can

no longer look at me in this world.'" This little incident of itself bespeaks its own impressive tale. But we come

now to

THE DREAD EXECUTIONS.

First, it deserves to be remarked, that the trials of Hardie and Baird, as already stated, took place at Stirling, on 13th July, 1820, and that James Wilson's took place in Glasgow, on the 20th of the same month and year, before the same Judges in all the cases. Wilson was doomed to be executed and beheaded at Glasgow, on 30th of August, 1820. Hardie and Baird were doomed to be executed and beheaded at Stirling, on the 8th of September, 1820. Therefore it is singular to notice, that Wilson, the last tried, was to be the first executed; while Hardie and Baird the first tried, were to be the last executed; and there is this other remarkable difference in their cases, namely, that Wilson was to be executed within forty days of his sentence, whereas Hardie and Baird were allowed the greater latitude of fifty-eight days after the date of their sentence. We can give no reason for this remarkable difference: but the law we believe, now is, that in capital cases not more than twenty-one days shall elapse from the date of the sentence and the period of the execution.

We must dwell upon those shocking State Executions a little longer, because they were the first of their kind that ever took place in Scotland, and we pray they will be the last. It may be harrowing to the feelings of our readers to listen to some other details referable to those matters; yet in several respects they may be viewed as characteristic of Scotchmen in an eminent degree, even under the most appalling and certainly under the most

unparalleled circumstances that have ever happened in this country. In that view, and for other reasons, we feel it to be our duty to notice them, and probably to impress upon them for the first time the stamp of undoubted and unfading history.

No sooner was poor old Wilson placed in his condemned cell in Glasgow, (the same from which Pritchard was taken the other day to his Execution), than he prepared to meet his awful doom with all the composure of an humble and resigned Christian. He had only one artless story to tell from first to last; and he told it with unvarying truth. To blacken his character, however, in the public estimation, and to strip him if possible, of all sympathy and commiseration, it was foully insinuated that he was an infidel; and had actually burned the Bible in prison. Anything base enough, or black enough, was too easily believed against any Radical Reformer of those days. He had been visited in prison by several of the esteemed clergymen of the city; but one was permitted to enter his cell from a neighbouring parish, who, instead of comforting him with religious views, tormented him with political dissertations. This was the Rev. James Lapslie, of Campsie, who in 1793 roamed about the country and hatched evidence to convict the accomplished but unfortunate Thomas Muir of Huntershill; for doing which, this Mr. Lapslie was actually placed upon the Pension List of Scotland for £50 per annum, as long as he lived. He himself was stigmatised as a political renegade, prior to that period; but on the present occasion he presumed to lecture Wilson "on the dreadful crimes he had committed against his King and country;" and he attempted to extract a written confession from him to that effect.

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