hard-earned property of the inhabitants of this District
carried off, and when the felon is brought into court
not do my best to secure his conviction? [The District
Attorney here went into a long and labored defence of
the course he had taken in preferring against the
prisoner forty-one indictments for larceny, and
seventy-four others, on the same state of facts, for
transportation. He denied that the forty-one larcenies
of the property of different individuals could be
included in one indictment, and declared that if the
prisoner's counsel would show the slightest authority
for it he would give up the case. After going on in this
strain for an hour or more, attacking the opposite
counsel and defending himself, in what Carlisle
pronounced 'the most extraordinary opening argument he
had ever heard in his life,' the District Attorney came
down at last to the facts of the case."]

"In what position is the prisoner placed by the
evidence? How is he introduced to the jury by his
Philadelphia friends? These witnesses were examined as
to his character, and the substance of their testimony
is, that he is a man who would steal a negro if he got a
chance. He passed for honest otherwise. But he says
himself he would steal a negro to liberate him, and the
court says it makes no difference whether he steals to
liberate or steals to sell. Being caught in the act, he
acknowledges his guilt, and says he was a deserter from
his God,--a backslider,--a church-member one year--the
next, in the Potomac with a schooner, stealing