The Massachusetts spy, and Worcester County advertiser. [volume] ([Worcester, Mass.]) 1825-1831, 1825-11-30
gCortester
WEDNESDAY,, NOVEMBER 80, 1926
EXECUTION.

|
James Reynolds, young man aged %, a
native of Westport in this State, has been
recently executed at New-York for the mur-
der Of Capt. West, on board of vessel Of
which he was commander, lying in that port.
Some of the New-York papers give two or
three columns of details of the execution. and
OF the circumstances connected with it. The,
clergyman who attended him says "he profes.
sed to have experienced wondertul change. I
and expresses his own belief of the sincerity
OF his professions. In letter to his wife
Reynolds says, in reference to +" everlasting
burning, y 6 am rot afraid of Mat-a,,y an
cry Judge is more yeeonciled 10 me. Hehas
pard0ned all my sass, giren me the complete
uietOry orer death, helI, and The graye.n His
confession has been published, which closes il,
the following strain; "Tsee angels in my room
at night, ready to carry my soulAto Ahafham's
bosom the moment it is separated from iyhe
body. There has been something revealed
TO me few nights ago, from the invisible
'cortd, witieh am bound TO keep secret firm,
any person but one man. an, happv. happy.
&c. And at the last, when the tie which
bound him to the earth was about to be sew
cred forever, when, if he had really become
penitent, we should suppose his whole mind
would have been absorbed in the conteynIo-
ton of his own awful situation, when contr;.
ton and humiliation would have best become
him, we find him harangung the multitude
about him, apparently solicitors for them
rather than himself.
IL cannot have escaped the observation Of
our readers, that, of late years, most of the cul.
prIts who have heen executed, amone whom
were Phillips, Martin, &c. have had similar
posthumous hononus awarded them. We
should be the last TO suggest that such profess
slons OF repentance and amendment are never
real, because we believe they sometimes are:
but such instances we believe are very rare.
In the present case, Reynolds says in his con-
fession, from which the above extract is m.Ie.
that he was instigated to commit the crime bv
a person named Townshend, and afterwards
declared to the clergyman that he was NOT
instigated to it by any person, and that no one
was privy TO it. Now one of the allegations
must have been false, circumstance hardly
TO be reconciled with his protested conversion.
The sacred writings contain but one in
stance OF the repentance and conversion of a
criminal-that of the thief on the erosion
which an able writer remarks, that g one in
stance was given, that none might DESPAIR.
and but one that none might presume.'' 1t is
the natural disposition of the human mind TO
be ready to believe that for which we hone.
1t is not therefore wonderful that lamentations.
heated and distempered by the near prospect
of certain and inevitable death, often, too. act
ed upon by the zeal of those who too frequent
ly lack discretion, should be ready to seize IN.
on the effects which fear has produced in their
minds as the evidence of change of heart.
But even allowing that these conversions are
real, we hold it highly injudicious to publish
such accounts, as tending TO disarm the pen
atty of the law of its chiefest terrors How
many there are, among the abandoned and
depraved, who, so far as relates TO tempo
raj things, have but little to attach them 10
this world, and who would not hesitate TO
commit the darkest crimes, if it were not for
the fear of future retribution. But as things
now go, they will soon be taught to look upon
conviction for crime as the first step towards
conversion, and it may justly be said of us,
that those whom we EXECUTE AS FELoNs we
also CANoNIzE AS SAINTS.