th such cases, and they have without hesitation
asserted that not one man in ten who has been hanged in England has been
condemned on more conclusive evidence. It is also apparent that in some
parts of the Union the same opinion prevails, as the following paragraph
from the _New York Daily Times_ will clearly show:--"The trial is
removed from the scene of the homicide, so that the prisoners shall Dot
be tried by those who knew them best, but is taken to a distant country.
The Press is forbidden, against all law and right, to publish a report
of the proceedings while the trial is in progress. Every particle of
evidence in regard to Butler's character is excluded; while a perfect
army of witnesses--clergymen, colonels, members of Congress, editors,
cabinet officers, &c., who had enjoyed the social intimacy of the
Wards--testified ostentatiously to the prisoner's mildness of temper,
declaring him, with anxious and undisguised exaggeration, to be gentle
and amiable to a fault. All these preparations, laboriously made and
steadily followed up, were for the purpose, not of determining the
truth, which is the only proper object of judicial inquiry--not of
ascertaining accurately and truly whether Matthew Ward did or did not
murder Butler--but to secure impunity for his act. This whole drama was
enacted to induce the jury to affirm a falsehood; and it has succeeded.
We do not believe John J. Crittenden entertains in his heart the shadow
of a doubt that Butler was murdered: we do not believe that a single man
on that jury believes that the man they have acquitted is innocent of
the crime laid to his charge. We regard the issue of this trial as of
the gravest importance: it proves that in one State of this Union,
wealth is stronger than justice; that Kentucky's most distinguished sons
take to their hearts and shield with all their power a murderer who has
money and social position at his command; and that under their auspices,
legal tribunals and the most solemn forms of justice have been made to
confer impunity on one of the blackest and most wanton murders which the
annals of crime record."

I add no comment, leaving the reader to make his own, deductions, and I
only hope, if the foregoing lines should ever meet the eye of a citizen
belonging to the sovereign State of Kentucky, they may stir him up to
amend the law or to purify the juries.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote BJ: The reader is requested to remember that all the words
pr