he was entirely sober when he sallied forth on his fatal enterprise The only value of the fact of his drunkenness, if it existed, would be to account for his disturbed nights at Depuy's, at Gray's, and at Willard's. It is clearly proved that his mind was not beclouded, nor his frame excited, by any such cause on any of those occasions; and Dr. Brigham truly tells you that while the maniac goes quietly to his bed, and is driven from it by the dreams of a disturbed imagination, the drunkard completes his revels and his orgies before he sinks to rest, and then lies stupid and besotted until nature restores his wasted energies with return of day.

Several of the prisoner's witnesses have fallen under the displeasure of the counsel for the people. John Depuy was asked on the trial of the preliminary issue, whether he had not said, when the prisoner was arrested, that he was no more crazy than himself. He answered, that he had not said "in those words," and asked leave to explain by stating what he had said. The court denied him the right and obliged him to answer yes or no, and of course he answered no. On this trial he makes the explanation, that after the murder of Van Nest, being informed that the prisoner had threatened his life, he said, "Bill would do well enough if they wouldn't give him liquor; he was bad enough at any time, and liquor made him worse." By a forced construction, this declaration, which substantially agrees with what he is proved by other witnesses to have said, is brought in conflict with his narrow denial, made on the former trial. It has been intimated on this trial, that the counsel for the prosecution would contend that John Depuy was an accomplice of the prisoner and the instigator of his crimes. This cruel and unfeeling charge has no ground, even in imagination, except that twelve years ago Depuy labored for six weeks on the farm of the late Mr. Van Nest, then belonging to his father-in-law, Peter Wyckoff, that a misunderstanding arose between them, which they adjusted by arbitration and that they were friends always afterward. The elder Mr. Wyckoff died six years go. It does not appear that the late Mr. Van Nest was even married at that time. JOHN DEPUY is a colored man, of vigorous frame and strong mind, with good education. His testimony, conclusive in this cause, was intelligently given. He claims your respect as a representative of his people, rising to that equality to which it is the tendency of our institutions to bring them. I have heard the greatest of American orators. I have heard

Daniel O'Connell and Sir Robert Peel, but I heard John Depuy make a speech excelling them all in eloquence: "They have made William Freeman what he is, a brute beast; they don't make any thing else of any of our people but brute beasts; but when we violate their laws, then they want to punish us as if we were men." I hope the Attorney General may press his charge: I like to see persecution carried to such a length; for the strongest bow, when bent too far, will break.

DEBORAH DEPUY is also assailed as unworthy of credit. She calls herself the wife of Hiram Depuy, with whom she has lived ostensibly in that relation for seven years, in, I believe, unquestioned fidelity to him and her children. But it appears that she has not been married with the proper legal solemnities. If she were a white woman, I should regard her testimony with caution, but the securities of marriage are denied to the African race over more than half of this country. It is within our own memory that the master's cupidity could divorce husband and wife within this state, and sell their children into perpetual bondage. Since the Act of Emancipation here, what has been done by the white man to lift up the race from the debasement into which he had plunged it? Let us impart to negroes the knowledge and spirit of Christianity, and share with them the privileges, dignity and hopes of citizens and Christians, before we expect of them purity and relf-respect.

But, gentlemen, even in a slave state, the testimony of this witness would receive credit in such a cause, for negroes may be witnesses there, for and against persons of their own caste. It is only when the life, liberty or property of the white man is invaded, that the negro is disqualified. Let us not be too severe. There was once upon the earth a Divine Teacher who shall come again to judge the world in righteousness. They brought to him a woman taken in adultery, and said to him that the law of Moses directed that such should be stoned to death, and he answered: "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone."

The testimony of SALLY FREEMAN, the mother of the prisoner, is questioned. She utters the voice of NATURE. She is the guardian whom God assigned to study, to watch, to learn, to know what the prisoner was, and is, and to cherish the memory of it for ever. She could not forget it if she would. There is not a blemish on the person of any one of us, born with us or coming from disease

or accident, nor have we committed a right or wrong action, that has not been treasured up in the memory of a mother. Juror! roll up the sleeve from your manly arm and you will find a scar there of which you know nothing. Your mother will give you the detail of every day's progress of the preventive disease.-SALLY FREEMAN has the mingled blood of the African and Indian races. She is nevertheless a woman, and a mother, and nature bears witness in every climate and in every country, to the singleness and uniformity of those characters. I have known and proved them in the hovel of the slave, and in the wigwam of the Chippewa. But Sally Freeman has been intemperate. The white man enslaved her ancestors of the one race, exiled and destroyed those of the other, and debased them all by corrupting their natural and healthful appetites. She comes honestly by her only vice. Yet when she comes here to testify for a life that is dearer to her than her own, to say she knows her own son, the white man says she is a drunkard! May Heaven forgive the white man for adding this last, this cruel injury to the wrongs of such a mother! Fortunately, gentlemen, her character and conduct are before you. No woman ever appeared with more sobriety, decency, modesty, and propriety, than she has exhibited here. No witness has dared to say or think that SALLY FREEMAN is not a woman of truth. Dr. CLARY, a witness for the prosecution, who knows her well, says, that with all her infirmities of temper and of habit, Sally "was always a truthful woman." The Roman Cornelia could not have claimed more. Let then the stricken mother testify for her son.

"I ask not, I care not, if guilt's in that heart,
I know that I love thee, whatever thou art."

The learned gentlemen who conduct this prosecution have attempted to show that the prisoner attended the trial of Henry Wyatt, whom I defended against an indictment for murder, in this Court, in February last; that he listened to me on that occasion, in regard to the impunity of crime, and that he went out a ripe and complete scholar. So far as these reflections affect me alone, they are unworthy of an answer. I pleaded for Wyatt then, as it was my right and my duty to do. Let the Counsel for the people prove the words I spake, before they charge me with Freeman's crimes. I am not unwilling those words should be recalled. I am not unwilling that any words I ever spoke in any responsible relation should be remembered. Since they will not recall those

words, I will do so for them. They were words like those I speak now, demanding cautious and impartial justice; words appealing to the reason, to the consciences, to the humanity of my fellow men; words calculated to make mankind know and love each other better, and adopt the benign principles of Christianity, instead of the long cherished maxim of retaliation and revenge. The creed of Mahomet was promulgated at a time when paper was of inestimable value, and the Koran teaches that every scrap of paper which the believer has saved during his life, will gather itself under his feet, to protect them from the burning iron which he must pass over, while entering into Paradise. Regardless as I have been of the unkind construction of my words and actions by my cotemporaries, I can say in all humility of spirit, that they are freely left to the ultimate, impartial consideration of mankind. But, gentlemen, how gross is the credulity implied by this charge! This stupid idiot, who cannot take into his ears, deaf as death, the words which I am speaking to you, though I stand within three feet of him, and who even now is exchanging smiles with his and my accusers, regardless of the deep anxiety depicted in your countenances, was standing at yonder post, sixty feet distant from me, when he was here, if he was here at all, on the trial of Henry Wyatt. The voice of the District Attorney reverberates through this dome, while mine is lost almost within the circle of the bar It does not appear that it was not that voice that beguiled the maniac, instead of mine; and certain it is that, since the prisoner does not comprehend the object of his attendance here now, he could not have understood anything that occurred on the trial of Wyatt.

Gentlemen, my responsibilities in this cause are discharged. In the earnestness and seriousness with which I have pleaded, you will find the reason for the firmness with which I have resisted the popular passions around me. I am in some degree responsible, like every other citizen, for the conduct of the community in which I live. They may not inflict on a maniac the punishment of a malefactor without involving me in blame, if I do not remonstrate. I cannot afford to be in error, abroad, and in future times. If I were capable of a sentiment so cruel and so base, I ought to hope for the conviction of the accused; for then the vindictive passions, now so highly excited, would subside, the consciences of the wise and the humane would be awakened, and in a few months the

invectives which have so long pursued me would be hurled against the jury and the court.

You have now the fate of this lunatic in your hands. To him as to me, so far as we can judge, it is comparatively indifferent what be the issue. The wisest of modern men has left us a saying, that "the hour of death is more fortunate than the hour of birth," a saying which he signalized by bestowing a gratuity twice as great upon the place where he died as upon the hamlet where he was born. For aught that we can judge, the prisoner is unconscious of danger and would be insensible to suffering, let it come when and in whatever forms it might. A verdict can only hasten, by a few months or years, the time when his bruised, diseased, wandering and benighted spirit shall return to Him who sent it forth on its sad and dreary pilgrimage.

The circumstances under which this trial closes are peculiar. I have seen capital cases where the parents, brothers, sisters, friends of the accused surrounded him, eagerly hanging upon the lips of his advocate, and watching, in the countenances of the court and jury, every smile and frown which might seem to indicate his fate. But there is no such scene here. The prisoner, though in the greenness of youth, is withered, decayed, senseless, almost lifeless. He has no father here. The descendant of slaves, that father died a victim to the vices of a superior race. There is no mother here, for her child is stained and polluted with the blood of mothers and of a sleeping infant; and he "looks and laughs so that she cannot bear to look upon him." There is no brother, nor sister, nor friend here. Popular rage against the accused has driven them hence, and scattered his kindred and people. On the other side, I notice the aged and venerable parents of Van Nest and his surviving children, and all around are mourning and sympathizing friends. I know not at whose instance they have come. I dare not say they ought not to be here. But I must say to you that we live in a christian and not in a savage state, and that the affliction which has fallen upon these mourners and us, was sent to teach them and us mercy and not retaliation; that, although we may send this maniac to the scaffold, it will not recall to life the manly form of Van Nest, nor re-animate the exhausted frame of that aged matron, nor restore to life and grace, and beauty, the murdered mother, nor call back the infant boy from the arms of his Savior. Such a verdict can do no good to the living, and carry no joy to the