Our public schools maintained at the common expense, give almost equal advantages to every class of people. The poor and the rich man's sons meet there on a footing of per fect equality. Our public worship, fixed at public expense in every parish, is rendered highly respectable by the attendance and the devotion of the wise and good. The public opinion is so firmly fixed, on national grounds, in favor of this institution, that he who treats it with contempt, or even with neglect, subverts his own character. But these advantages do not, nor indeed can they be expected to, have such an entire effect as to perfectly moralize the whole community. The argument, therefore, if it proved anything, would prove that no one, born and educated where they exist, could commit wilful and malicious murder, and would fall but little short of concluding that murder could not be committed in the country. These advantages can never be too highly appreciated; but yet they may be neglected; and, had the prisoner made a due and proper improvement of them, he would not have been in the unfortunate situation where we see him; nor should we have been called to contemplate, in pain and anxiety, the most distressing scene that our country has ever exhibited. I cannot, in justice to the public, pass over this point of the cause, without a few observations on what I consider as great defects of education in this country.

"As the bird is taught the use and effect of its wings and plumage while it is yet in the nest, so the morals of the man are formed in or near the cradle. The parent sometimes feels a kind of animal fondness for the infant; but yet he extends his views and wishes more to the point where he shall be relieved from the trouble of guardianship and the expense of education, than to that where he shall view the child as beloved by the world, or, at least, by the neighborhood, for the correctness of his morals, the benevolence of his heart, and the chastity of his manners. Hence the child observes the public opinion to be treated

with contempt, and gains an unalterable habit of despising it himself. He who does not regard the opinion of the public, places no estimation upon his own character, and soon becomes an unrestrained, licentious profligate, capable of the most atrocious enormities. It is true that a sense of religion is a higher and stronger motive; but this necessarily involves a love of character. This is not the only defect in the education of families. Parents are too apt to indulge themselves, in the hearing of their children, on such topics as convince young minds that they do not hold vice and debauchery in abhorrence and detestation. This is at once made a constructive license for the commission of vice and wickedness.

"The most prevailing error, however, is a false fondness and misapplied tenderness towards children. The pas sions and propensities, which, when properly improved, will render life agreeable and happy, and without which life could not subsist, must, from the present state of human nature, be subjected to error on the first opening of the agency of the mind. It is the business, but never ought to be considered as the task, of the parent, to correct the heart, and to direct the tender mind into the proper channel. This requires firmness, watchfulness and perseverance; but they who, from a criminal disposition to ease, or from a false tenderness, neglect it, sow the seeds of misfortune and misery, and are sure to reap an abundant harvest in the decline of years.

"Idleness is the most prolific source of human woe. It is a rebellion against the mode of our existence. The idle man is an interruption to the business of his neighborhood, and a burden to society. Unless the mind is directed with some degree of ardor to some laudable, or at least repu table pursuit, the imagination will not fail to attend to the calls of animal propensities, and to cultivate unlawful desires. Vices, at which we shudder on their first ap

pearance, lose all their deformity and turpitude as they become familiar. It is in vain for any one to determine that he will do wrong, and yet that he will not effect his purpose by base and disgraceful means.

"The present case illustrates this hypothesis as fully as any one within the reach of imagination. If the prisoner had made up his mind, as the witnesses swear that he told them he had, to dishonor the deceased, either from the feelings of revenge, or his own propensities, he had given up the powers of self-control, and was no longer a free agent. The circumstances with which the crime would be effected were entirely left to time and accident, while all the means which these might render necessary to the atrocious end were to be expected as of course. The knife might have been borrowed for an innocent employment; and if any one present had forewarned the prisoner, that his habits were so depraved that he might be reduced to a situation in which he would use it to commit murder, he would, no doubt, have considered this kind premonition as a slander. But, when men are carried down on the tide of depravity, they are afraid to notice the landmarks by which their progress might be known, and they, therefore, can never be sensible of their own situation.

"When the prisoner opened his plan, and produced the false certificate, he had, no doubt, a hope of success; but, when the deceased tore the false papers with indignation, disappointment urged him to other methods. He had engaged with his friend to return in an hour, and relate his success; his pride would not allow him to go back with a tale of defeat; for there is, among idle and vicious people, a kind of false pride, erroneously called honor, which drives them on in their career of criminality. Idle men, by an habitual association, seclude themselves from the rest of the community, and have no interest in anything but their own corrupted and depraved opinions of each

other. Their conversation turns on those subjects which increase their depravity.

"When the prisoner exhibited the fatal knife, she could by no means conceive that he would carry his threats into execution, and he, at that moment, perhaps had no intention to murder her. But the imbecility of his strength, and the defect in his arm, rendered her strength superior to his efforts. When she turned on her face to avoid him, he pierced her back to oblige her to alter her position. When he threatened her throat, her arms were placed in its defence, until repeated wounds had removed them. She was then under his control, and, if we could suffer our imagination to dwell on the horrid picture, we might ask why he did not recede from his cruel purpose? He had gone too far; his guilt raised itself up in full portrait before him. His spirits being exhausted in the struggle, gave him opportunity to view it, and he was then reduced, in order to escape punishment, to give the fatal wound in

the throat.

"We are called on for evidence of the prisoner's possessing a disposition of heart capable of so cruel a murder; and yet the very position of the defence maintains that he was a person of great depravity of morals, that he had a heart void of social duty, and fatally bent on mischief. The statement is, that they were in love with each other, and, being crossed, they agreed to destroy themselves; that he induced her to begin; delivered her the knife for that purpose, and encouraged her to her own murder by the persuasion that he would commit another, by killing himself, as soon as hers was accomplished. But how far will this deliver the prisoner from the charge in the indictment? It admits that he was present, aiding, abetting and encouraging, her to commit the felony. If he was of a sound mind, and amenable for his conduct, he was clearly a principal in the murder. For he who hands a weapon to one to commit a murder, and stands by,

encouraging it to be done, is a principal. The books do not, that I recollect, furnish many examples where an accessary to a suicide is considered as a principal. Yet it is laid down as a rule that he who advises a person to take poison is guilty of murder, though he is absent when it is taken. I did not know but that a part of the defence might be rested on the prisoner's insanity; yet his insanity is not pretended.

"To dwell on this point is unnecessary, as the whole defence is founded on conjectures, unnatural in themselves, and in opposition to the tenor of the whole evidence. If their affections were placed on each other, yet there is no evidence that there were any adverse circumstances which could induce them, at that time and place, to deprive themselves of life; nor is there any presumption that she could have been induced to have effected her death in that manner. The most extravagant fictions are recurred to in order to bring this unnatural conjecture within the lines of possibility; but they run away, and refuse to recognize this scene as one of their family. When suicide is the effect of disappointment, the victim is led on alternately by hope and despair, resolved, yet reluctant, until distraction expels the powers of free agency, and the horrors of death are no longer felt. But that is a process demanding length of time: moments or hours cannot be sufficient for it. In the scene we contemplate, the transition is, in a moment, from cheerful ease and tranquillity to despair and voluntary death, by a process of unexampled

torture.

"Observe the picture pressed upon you in the defence. The ardent lover delivers the knife to her in whom his joys and wishes are concentrated; he calmly sits and sees her cut herself in pieces. The blood flows from her wounds to soothe his vexatious passion, while her groans and agonies are music to his ears! The herds bellow around the drops of wasted blood; the tiger mourns over