execution of the sentence of death
pronounced against John Porteous, late Captain-Lieutenant of the City
Guard of Edinburgh, present prisoner in the Tolbooth of that city, be
respited for six weeks from the time appointed for his execution.

The assembled spectators of almost all degrees, whose minds had been
wound up to the pitch which we have described, uttered a groan, or rather
a roar of indignation and disappointed revenge, similar to that of a
tiger from whom his meal has been rent by his keeper when he was just
about to devour it. This fierce exclamation seemed to forbode some
immediate explosion of popular resentment, and, in fact, such had been
expected by the magistrates, and the necessary measures had been taken to
repress it. But the shout was not repeated, nor did any sudden tumult
ensue, such as it appeared to announce. The populace seemed to be ashamed
of having expressed their disappointment in a vain clamour, and the sound
changed, not into the silence which had preceded the arrival of these
stunning news, but into stifled mutterings, which each group maintained
among themselves, and which were blended into one deep and hoarse murmur
which floated above the assembly.

Yet still, though all expectation of the execution was over, the mob
remained assembled, stationary, as it were, through very resentment,
gazing on the preparations for death, which had now been made in vain,
and stimulating their feelings, by recalling the various claims which
Wilson might have had on royal mercy, from the mistaken motives on which
he acted, as well as from the generosity he had displayed towards his
accomplice. "This man," they said,--"the brave, the resolute, the
generous, was executed to death without mercy for stealing a purse of
gold, which in some sense he might consider as a fair reprisal; while the
profligate satellite, who took advantage of a trifling tumult,
inseparable from such occasions, to shed the blood of twenty of his
fellow-citizens, is deemed a fitting object for the exercise of the royal
prerogative of mercy. Is this to be borne?--would our fathers have borne
it? Are not we, like them, Scotsmen and burghers of Edinburgh?"

The officers of justice began now to remove the scaffold, and other
preparations which had been made for the execution, in hopes, by doing
so, to accelerate the dispersion of the multitude. The measure had the
desired effect; for no sooner had the fatal tree been unfixed from the