“May it please your excellency—
“Having received from your excellency's clemency,
that respite from death which affords me
the opportunity of humbly and sincerely thanking
you, I avail myself of the indulgence of pen and
paper, and of that goodness you have already manifested
towards me, to contradict a most cruel and
injurious publication in a late newspaper, stating
that I had confessed myself guilty of the crimes
which a perjured wretch came forward to swear
against me. My lord, it is not by the confession of
crimes which would render me unfit for society,
that I expect to live; it is upon the strength of that
innocence which I will boldly maintain with my
last breath, which I have already affirmed in a declaration,
which I thought was to have been my
last, and which I had directed to be published as
my vindication from infamy, ten times more terrible
to me than death.
“I know my lord, that my own unhappy situation,
the anguish of a distracted wife, the mistaken
tenderness of an affectionate brother, have been resorted
to, to procure that confession, and I was
given to understand that my life would have been
spared on such conditions. I as decidedly refused
as I should do now, though your excellency's pardon
was to be the reward. Judge then, my lord,
of the situation of a man to whom life was offered,
upon no other condition than that of betraying himself,
by a confession both false and base.
“And lastly, let me make one humble observation
to your excellency, that the evidence should
be strong indeed to induce conviction, that an industrious
man, enjoying both comfort and competence;
who had lived all his life in one neighbourhood;
whose character, as well as that of all his
stock, has been free from reproach of any kind; who
certainly, if allowed to say so much for himself,
would not shed the blood of any human creature;
who is a husband and the father of a family; would
engage himself with a common soldier, in any system
that had for its end robbery, murder and destruction—for
such was the evidence of the witness
Wheatly.
“If upon these grounds, and the facts already
submitted to your excellency, I am to be pardoned,
I shall not fail to maintain the most dutiful sense
of gratitude for that act of justice as well as mercy;
and in the meantime, I beg to remain your excellency's
most obedient humble servant,
“WILLIAM ORR.”
Carrickfergus Jail, October 10th, 1797.
