Crime & punishment > Notes of conversations with H. M'Donald, N. Sutherland, and H. M'Intosh, (who were executed at Edinburgh, April 22, 1812,) during the time they were under sentence of death

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“ Dear Father and Mother,
“ I write you this letter to inform you,
that it comes from a sincere but troubled heart,
for the grief I have caused you and all the fa¬
mily. Dear father and mother, you may think
my case is very distressing, but I have reason
to thank God 1 never felt so much comfort all
my life, as since I have come within these gloomy
walls, and with reading the Bible, that blessed
book that I thought so little of, and the comfort
it gives me at this present hour, I am at a loss
to describe to you. But I hope that God will
be your comfort; and, dear father and mother,
it is better for me to die on a scaffold, than on a
bed of down in an unconverted state. Dear
father and mother, these chains that now bind
me to the ground, I hope, are the best friends
that ever I had in this world ; for if 1 had car¬
ried on in sin, God might have struck me dead
before I could have cried for mercy to him. I
believe, from the bottom of my heart, that it
has been God that has brought me to this pri¬
son. Dear father and mother, all that man can
do is but to destroy the body; but God can des¬
troy both soul and body in hell; but I hope in
God that he will receive my soul in mercy;
and I hope by this time two weeks it will be in
heaven, that glorious part where there is ever¬
lasting happiness. Oh! that God may receive
my soul, which 1 hope he will, from all danger.
God will hear the groaning of the prisoner, and