mysterious, awful fate, extended even to the scattered farm-houses near
Canal Street. Between this and the last of August, a hundred and fifty-
four negroes, exclusive of whites, were thrown into prison, till every
cell was crowded and packed to suffocation with them. For three months,
sentence of condemnation was on an average of one a day. The last
execution was that of a Catholic priest, or rather of a schoolmaster of
the city, who was charged with being one. Mary Burton, after an interval
of three months, pretended to remember that he was present with the other
conspirators she had first named as being in Hughson's tavern.

His trial was long, and apparently without excitement. He conducted his
own case with great ability, and brought many witnesses to prove his good
character and orderly conduct; but he, of course, could not disprove the
assertion of Mary, that she had some time or other seen him with the
conspirators at Hughson's tavern--for the latter, with his wife and Peggy,
and the negroes she had before named, had all been executed. Mary Burton
alone was left, and her evidence being credited, no amount of testimony
could avail him.

Although the proceedings were all dignified and solemn, as became an
English court, yet the course the trial took showed how utterly unbalanced
and one-sided it had become. To add weight to Mary's evidence, many
witnesses were examined to prove that Ury, though a schoolmaster, had
performed the duties of a Catholic priest, as though this were an
important point to establish. The attorney-general, in opening the case,
drew a horrible picture of former persecutions by the Papists, and their
cruelties to the Protestants, until it was apparent that all that the jury
needed to indorse a verdict of guilty was evidence that he was a Catholic
priest. Still it would be unfair to attribute this feeling wholly to
religious intolerance or the spirit of persecution. England was at this