him from feeling everlasting misery.  With these thoughts having somewhat composed himself, he approached the place where he was to suffer, with tolerable temper and constancy, entreating the people who were there in very great numbers to pray for him, and begging that all by his example would learn to stifle the first motions of wickedness and sin, since such was the depravity of human nature that no man knew how soon he might fall.  At the same place he delivered a paper in which he much extenuated the crime for which he suffered, and from whence he would feign have insinuated that it was a rash action committed when in drink, and which he should certainly have set right again when he was sober.  In this frame of mind he suffered, on the 29th of April, 1724, being then about fifty years of age.

The Life of FREDERICK SCHMIDT, Alterer of Bank-Notes

When persons sin out of ignorance there is great room for pity, and when persons suddenly become guilty of evil through a precipitate yielding to the violence of their passions there is still room for extenuation.  But when people sin, not only against knowledge but deliberately, and without the incitement of any violent passion such as anger or lust, even as nothing can be said in alleviation, so there is little or no room left for compassion.

Frederick Schmidt was a person born of a very honourable and wealthy family at Breslau, the capital of the Duchy of Silesia in the north-east of Germany.  They educated this their son not only in such a manner as might qualify him for the occupation they designed him, of a merchant, but also gave him a most learned and liberal knowledge, such as suited a person of the highest rank.  He lived, however, at Breslau as a merchant for many years, and at the request of his friends, when very young, he married a lady of considerable fortune, but upon some disgust at her behaviour they parted, and had not lived together for many years before his death.

He carried on a very considerable correspondence to Hamburg, Amsterdam and other places, and above a year before had been over in England to transact some affairs, and thought it, it seems, so easy a matter to live here by his wits, that he returned hither with the Baron Vanloden and the Countess Vanloden.  It is very hard to say what these people really were, some people taking Schmidt for the baron’s servant, but he himself affirmed, and indeed it seems most likely, that they were companions, and that both of them exerted their utmost skill in defrauding others to maintain her.