[413]
Speaker sent a messenger to invite him to take a seat near his own.
He often applied to the Governor to exert his pardoning power, where he thought there were mitigating circumstances attending the commission of a crime; or where the mind and health of a prisoner seemed breaking down; or where a long course of good conduct seemed deserving of reward.
When Governor Young had become sufficiently acquainted with him to form a just estimate of his character, he said to him, ‘Friend Hopper, I will pardon any convict, whom you say you conscientiously believe I ought to pardon.
If I err at all, I prefer that it should be on the side of mercy.
But so many cases press upon my attention, and it is so difficult to examine them all thoroughly, that it is a great relief to find a man in whose judgment and integrity I have such perfect confidence, as I have in yours.’
On the occasion of one of these applications for mercy, the following quaint correspondence passed between him and the Governor:
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