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GENERAL SESSIONS.

NEW YORK, Aug. 21.

The People v. Edward Ferris and others.

Indictment for a riot.

CHARGE

Ot the Hon. De Witt Clinton, Mayor of the city of New York, to the Jury, in the above triak

Gentlemen of the Jury,

THIS is an indictment for a riot committed in Trinity Church, during the commencement of Columbia College, and while the professors were performing the duties appertaining to that occasion. There are eight persons indicted. Of these, one pleads guilty, and submits to the mercy of the court. Anothert must be acquitted by you, as there is no evidence of any participation by him, in the disturbances of the day. It becomes your duty, therefore, to inquire whether the remaining six be guilty or

not.

Gentlemen-Whatever may be the charge of the court in this trial, I trust, that you will not think it in any way tinctured with feeling. You must be persuaded that the court is well disposed towards the defendants. They were persons of respectable standing in society, and most of them young gentlemen just en

• William G. Uraham.

+ Charles Dickinsony Jan,

No. XIV.

F

tering on life. If the charge which is about to be delivered to you, appears very decisive, and to bear hardly on the defendants, I trust that you will find it warranted by the evidence, and sanctioned by that honest indignation which every man must feel for the violated majesty of the laws.

It is not necessary, gentlemen, to recapitulate all the evidence in this trial. It has already been stated to you very minutely by the district attorney, and you will be able to apply it to each of the defendants, and thereby ascertain his respective guilt. A brief narration of the principal facts, however, will be indispensable, in order to put this cause in its true light.

It appears, gentlemen, that the riot with which the defendants are charged, took place while the college of this city was solemnizing its annual commencement in Trinity Church. The immediate cause of the disturbances originated in the contumacious behaviour of Mr. John B. Stevenson, one of the defendants, a graduate, in refusing to comply with some corrections which the professors had deemed essential, in the parts assigned to him, in the oratorical performances of the day. It seems that this gentleman was a respondent in a forensick discussion, and to him was assigned the duty, after the other parties in debate had delivered their arguments on both sides, to pronounce the most approved doctrine, on the subject of discussion. It is in evidence before you, that when this young gentleman subjected his thesis to the examination of his professors, there was one sentiment which they deemed it judicious to correct. It was corrected so as to meet the ideas of the professors. The correction was received with hesitation and reluctance on the part of Mr. Stevenson. He was, however, apprised that the corrections must be adopted by him; that he was bound to submit to them; and, moreover, that there was a statute of the college which rendered it impossible for the professors to confer a degree on him, if he contumaciously refused to do so. After some difficulty the piece was adopted with its corrections. Nothing more transpired on the subject, until the day of the commencement, when, to the surprise of the professors, Mr. Stevenson delivered his speech as originally written by himself, totally disregarding the corrections which had been made. After he had finished the part assigned to him, he was privately called aside, and admonished by the professors. They expostulated on the impropriety of his conduct, and stated to him that as he had infracted the laws of the college, it became impossible to confer a degree on him, without a manifest violation of their duty. They, therefore advised him not to go on the stage to receive it, as it could not be conferred on him. Stevenson disregards the orders of the professors, mounts the stage and demands his diploma. It is refused. " I demand it," says Stevenson, " in the name of the trustees," and suddenly addressed himself to the audience, and attempted to explain the cause of the diploma being refused to him. Here it is, gentlemen, that the disturbance commences. Shouting, and clapping, and hissing, and wild uproar. Maxwell, (one of the defendants) goes on the stage, and appeals to the audience. Mr. Verplank, (another of the defendants) follows and demands of Mr. Mason, the Provost, the reasons of the diploma being refused to Mr. Stevenson? "The reasons," exclaims Verplank, "are not satisfactory-Maxwell must be supported!" And thereupon turns to the audience, and moves, "that the thanks of the meeting be given to Mr. Maxwell for his spirited defence of an injured man." Here the uproar increasing, all becomes disorder, and confusion, and riot. "Hustle the officers." Bring forth the Provost!" "Three groans for the Provost!" and such riotous acclamations ensued. Mr. Ferris runs through the middle of the aisle, his fists clenched, and raised in the attitude of menace and violence, crying, "tyranny," "oppression." In fine, gentlemen, the scene was such, if you believe the testimony, as was never exceeded on any occasion whatever, unless, as has been emphatically stated, it was that memorable riot, best known as the Doctor's Mob; a tumultuous insurrection, as you all know, which carried dismay and horror through this city. The scene of riot and disgrace, so excited in the church, continued, as has been proved, about three quarters of an hour, or an hour. The duties of the day were entirely interrupted, and the professors quitted the church without consummating the solemnities of the occasion.

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Such, gentlemen, are the principal facts developed in this In palliation of the monstrous indignity offered the laws, the counsel for the defendants have urged, with more zeal than the matter deserved, that there was no statute of the university which vested in the professors the power of compelling the students to abide the corrections made in their rhetorical performances, and that they have no authority for denying to a graduate his degree should he refuse to adopt those corrections. This is a point very strenuously contended for by the defendants' counsel, but it is one that is totally immaterial in this trial. It requires no private law to vest that power in the professors. It is vested in them impliedly, being a power inseparable from their functions, and essential to the due performance of their duties. There is no positive law which gives a schoolmaster a right to correct his pupils yet it is universally acknowledged. And the professors of a college, as the conservators of the morals of their students, and the supervisors of their studies, have necessarily and impliedly the general superintendance of the conduct and studies of their scholars. It is their duty to see that there be nothing improper or immoral in the conduct of their disciples, and that they imbibe no notions incompatible with the principles of morality and religion. Shall it then be said that a professor has not the power to correct the literary performance of the student? What if any licentious extravagance should creep into the compositions of a collegian? Shall it be ushered to the world, sanc. tioned by the professors, as it necessarily would be if permitted to emanate from their hands? Surely every reflecting man must perceive in the consequences which such a coctrine would entail upon society, the futility of the doctrine itself. It is well known that we are divided into parties both in religion and politics. A student, if suffered to utter his crude and undigested ideas, might excite the disgust, or the angry passions of the auditory, and thereby stir up tumultuous and riotous disturbances. For example-What if a student should attempt to establish the nonexistence of the Deity, or to anathematize the constituted authority of the country: shall there not be vested in the professors a discretion and judgment as to the fitness of these subjects for public discussion? Undoubtedly so-And it was the duty of Mr. Stevenson to have submitted with silent deference to the better judgment of his masters, and not to have dared to array his private opinions, in opposition to those of superior age and intelligence.

And you will readily perceive, gentlemen, that there must be vested necessarily in the professors, a discretion as to the propriety of granting diplomas to the graduates; a discretion to be exercised by the professors after a full view of the conduct and merits of the scholar, during the whole term of his study. For there may be occasions, when, if this power be not vested in them, the student may get his degree in spite of the most unwarrantable behaviour. What, if a student act in the most refractory manner on the very day assigned for conferring degrees, shall there not be a power in the professors of refusing him the literary honours which otherwise would be awarded to him? But it were useless, gentlemen, to press the discussion of these points further. It must be evident to you, that the defendants can derive no kind of palliation of their offence from these argu

ments.

It is said also, gentlemen, that the disturbance excited by the defendants, was not a riot in the legal acceptation of the term, and that therefore the defendants cannot be convicted under this indictment. A riot, it is said, requires a preconcert, or a design previously conceived, and afterwards consummated; and that as there was no previous design in this case, that the tumult which took place in the church, was merely either an affray or a rout, and to prove this Hawkins has been cited, where a riot is described to be "a tumultuous disturbance of the peace by three persons or more, assembling together of their own authority with an intent mutually to assist one another against any one who shall oppose them in the execution of some enterprise of a private nature, and afterwards actually executing the same in a violent and turbulent manner, to the terror of the people, whether the act intended were of itself lawful or unlawful." (Hawkins, B. i. p. 51.) The definition of a riot, gentlemen, has hitherto been involved in obscurity. The definition of it laid down by Hawkins, is undoubtedly bad. If it require preconcert on the part of those who create the disturbance, then those only who shall have taken part in the deliberation anterior to the disturbance, could be convicted as rioters. If this be true, then, a person who might accidentally have taken part in a tumult, although he may have been one of the most active agents, could not be punished as a rioter, unless the preconcert or previous design was brought home to him. But this, I apprehend, is not ław. It requires no previous design or preconcert in order to