er
prohibition in the same section extends to all debts existing or
future. Sixthly, that, upon any other construction, one great political
object of the Constitution will fail of its accomplishment.

[Footnote 1: Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. Rep. 122.]

THE MURDER OF CAPTAIN JOSEPH WHITE.

AN ARGUMENT ON THE TRIAL OF JOHN FRANCIS KNAPP, FOR THE MURDER OF JOSEPH
WHITE, OF SALEM, IN ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS, ON THE NIGHT OF THE 6TH
OF APRIL, 1830.

[The following argument was addressed to the jury at a trial for a
remarkable murder. A more extraordinary case never occurred in this
country, nor is it equalled in strange interest by any trial in the
French _Causes Celebres_ or the English _State Trials_. Deep sensation
and intense curiosity were excited through the whole country, at the
time of the occurrence of the event, not only by the atrocity of the
crime, but by the position of the victim, and the romantic incidents in
the detection and fate of the assassin and his accomplices.

The following outline of the facts will assist the reader to understand
the bearings of the argument.

Joseph White, Esq. was found murdered in his bed, in his mansion-house,
on the morning of the 7th of April, 1830. He was a wealthy merchant of
Salem, eighty-two years of age, and had for many years given up active
business. His servant-man rose that morning at six o'clock, and on going
down into the kitchen, and opening the shutters of the window, saw that
the back window of the east parlor was open, and that a plank was raised
to the window from the back yard; he then went into the parlor, but saw
no trace of any person having been there. He went to the apartment of
the maid-servant, and told her, and then into Mr. White's chamber by its
back door, and saw that the door of his chamber, leading into the front
entry, was open. On approaching the bed, he found the bed-clothes turned
down, and Mr. White dead, his countenance pallid, and his night-clothes
and bed drenched in blood. He hastened to the neighboring houses to make
known the event. He and the maid-servant were the only persons who slept
in the house that night, except Mr. White himself, whose niece, Mrs.
Beckford, his house-keeper, was then absent on a visit to her daughter,
at Wenham.

The physicians and the coroner's jury, who were called to examine the
body, found on it thirteen deep stabs, made as if by a sharp dirk or
poniard, and the appearance of a h