sist from any help to her? Could they believe that you had no deliberate hatred in your mind, when there is a fine mark of your penitence and remorse? Your distraction was the horror of momentary panic, and it came too late? But it was followed up in a short period by the command of a most wicked falsehood in cold blood, impressed upon one of your servants, a falsehood asserted the very next morning by yourself. Hundreds have been executed for murders less aggravated than yours, less depraved, and less cruel. It is the second instance in the county of Glamorgan since my official intercourse with it, (and I shall after this acquittal fear that it will not be the last,) of a master's tyranny to a servant ending in death and murder. Whatever motive of judgment or of conscience induced the jury to deliver this verdict, it will be long felt as a deep stain upon the county, that such guilt as your's could escape; though I impute no blame to the mercy which I cannot understand.

"You have taught your son to resemble you-he did venture to entreat that you would arrest your murdering hand-but when? after the victim had expired! he had previously fomented your bitterness against this wretched creature, by telling that idle story of the ghost, which you resented by killing her. When he addressed himself to her, supposing her to be alive, it was in terms of unfeeling cruelty; you have done, said he, mischief enough, go to bed. God of mercy! are servants to be thus treated! Is it in this generous island that we can hear of such tyrannies? Had the jury convicted you of the murder, not all your opulence, or the interest it could make, would have given to the short interval between your sentence and your death one additional hour. Who would imagine that I am talking all this time of manslaughter, which is, in its legal acceptance, heated passion, or a wanton act with no peril of life; but ending, by accident unforeseen, in death?

"The jury would themselves ignorantly tell us, that if it be not murder it is very near it, and is the most aggravated of manslaughter, which of course would call upon us to inflict an exemplary punishment upon such an offender. In truth, it is a murder-it is nothing else-not one feature of the mitigated crime appears. It is at the best a depraved and cruel outrage, endangering life and ending in the death for which it was calculated; but at the worst it is also deliberation in cold blood, and with a depraved purpose to kill; in both of these views it is equally a murder, yet how to punish it under its name of manslaughter is a difficulty;—we are crippled, and yet it is no dishonor to the law that we are-for it never could suppose that a case like this could have the name of manslaughter stamped upon it, by a verdict. We cannot imprison for the offence to which your guilt has been softened by the verdict, for more than one year. The additional punishment for burning in the hand for manslaughter, (properly understood) was absurd and cruel, or both. But in a case like this, one half laments that it has been suspended. Branded, however, you are still to be; conscience will inflict that penalty; the abhorrence of your character in every feeling heart, will pollute your path and your bed. The day will come, when this murder (as I call it still, and by its true name,) will sit heavily upon your soul, unless the guilt is deeply repented before that hour shall come. The only punishment which is now to be added by the court, instead of burning in the hand, is fine. As your fortune is ample, and as we are desirous to mark our sense of your guilt, we should make that fine exemplary, as well as penal. But here again we are crippled, for the law contemplating what is manslaughter, (not a case like yours,) has told us that it must be a moderate fine."

The following impressive Address was delivered by a Judge of the United States of America: it is presumed that the sentiments which it breathes are so congenial to every heart, as to entitle it to a place in this selection.

SENTENCE passed by JUDGE WILDS, at Charleston, S. C. on JOHN SLATER, for the inhuman murder of his slave, in January 1806.

"JOHN SLATER, you have been convicted, by a Jury of your country, of the wilful murder of your own slave; and I am sorry to say, the short, impressive, uncontradicted testimony, on which that conviction was founded, leaves but too little room to doubt its propriety.

"The annals of human depravity might be safely challenged, for a parallel to this unfeeling, bloody, and diabolical transaction.

"You caused your unoffending, unresisting slave, to be bound hand and foot, by a refinement in cruelty, compelled his companion, perhaps, the friend of his heart, to chop off his head with an axe; and to cast his body, yet convulsing with the agonies of death, into the water! And this deed you dared to perpetrate in the harbour of Charleston, within a few yards of the shore, unblushingly in the face of open day. Had your murderous arm been raised against your equal, whom the laws of selfdefence, and the more efficacious laws of the land, unite to protect, your crime would not have been without precedent, and would have seemed less horrid. Your personal risque would at least have proved, that though a murderer, you were no coward. But, you too well knew, that this unfortunate man, whom chance had subjected to your caprice, had not, like yourself, chartered to him by the laws of the land, the sacred rights of nature; and that a stern, but necessary policy, had disarm

ed him of the rights of self-defence: Too well vou knew, that to you alone he could look for protection, and that your arm alone could shield him from oppression, or avenge his wrongs; yet that arm you cruelly stretched out for his destruction.

"The counsel who generously volunteered his services in your behalf, shocked at the enormity of your offence, endeavoured to find a refuge, as well for his own feelings, as for those of all who heard your trial, in a derangement of your intellect. Several witnesses were examined to establish this fact, but the result of their testimony, it is apprehended, was as little satisfactory to his mind, as to those of the Jury, to whom it was addressed; I sincerely wish this defence had proved successful; not from any desire to save you from the punishment which awaits you, and which you so richly merit; but from the desire of saving my country from the foul reproach, of having in its bosom so great a monster.

"From the peculiar situation of this country, our fathers felt themselves justified, in subjecting to a very slight punishment, the man who murders a slave: Whether the present state of society requires a continuation of this policy, so opposite to the apparent rights of humanity, it remains for a subsequent legislature to decide. Their attention would, long ere this, have been directed to this subject; but, for the honor of human nature, such hardened sinners as yourself, are rarely found, to disturb the repose of society; the grand Jury of this district, deeply impressed with your daring outrage against the laws both of God and man, made a very strong expression of their feelings on this subject to the legislature; and from the wisdom and justice of that body, the friends of humanity may confidently hope soon to see this, blackest in the catalogue of human crimes, pursued with appropriate punishment.

In proceeding to pass the sentence, which the law provided for your offence, I confess, I never felt more forcibly the want of power, to make respected the laws of my country, whose minister I am. You have already violated the majesty of those laws-you have profanely pleaded, the law under which you stand convicted—as a justification of your crime-you have held that law in one. hand, and brandished your bloody axe in the other, impiously contending, that the one gave a licence to the unconstrained use of the other.

"But though you will go off unhurt in person by the present sentence, expect not to escape with impunity; your bloody deed has set a mark upon you, which I fear the good actions of your life will not efface. You will be held in abhorrence by an impartial world, and shunned as a monster by every honest man-your unoffending posterity will be visited for your iniquity, by the stigma of deriving their origin from an unfeeling murderer-your days, which will be but few, will be spent in wretchedness; and, if your conscience is not steeled against every virtuous emotion; if you be not entirely abandoned to hardness of heart, the mangled mutilated corpse of your murdered slave will ever be present in your imagination: obtruding itself into all your amusements, and haunting you in the hours of silence and repose.

"But should you not regard the reproaches of an offended world; should you bear with callous insensibility, the gnawings of a guilty conscience; yet remember! I charge you remember! that an awful period is fast approaching, and with you is close at hand, when you must appear before a tribunal, whose want of power can afford you no prospect of impunity; when you must raise your bloody hands at the bar of an impartial, omnipotent Judge! Remember! I pray you remember! whilst you have time, that God is just, and that his vengeance will not sleep for ever!"