It is not the smallest among those Sufferings which Men under Sentence of the Law endure, that a censorious World are continually propagating evil Reports, and spreading from one to another Rumors without Foundation. The Miseries which real Breaches of the Laws draw on unhappy Criminals are heavy enough in themselves to excite Compassion, and it is either Cruelty of Disposition, or a Barbarous Levity of Mind from whence Men are led to scatter such Detractions … turning their Conjectures into formal Stories, merely to blacken one already overthrown.

And, indeed, if Shepherd had been as wretched, and as silly a Rogue in the World as upon the Stage, the lower Gentry, who attended him to Tyburn, wou'd never have pittied him when he was hang'd.

What a lamentable case it is to see so many Christian men and women strangled on that cursed tree of the gallows, insomuch as if in a large field a man might see together all the Christians, that but in one year, throughout England, come to the untimely and ignominious death, if there were any spark of grace, or charity in him, it would make his heart to bleed for pity and compassion.

How shocking soever this Consideration may be, it must be owed, that these Terrors and these Punishments are … absolutely necessary for the Preservation of Order and Government.