CLERK OF THE COURT.
Prisoner, stand up and listen to the sentence.

JUDGE BOLTON (_solemnly_).
Laws hitherto are framed to punish crime
All legislators have been slow to deal
With vice in its first elements; and here
Lie the pernicious root and seeds of sin.
That children are permitted to grow up
From infancy to youth without instruction,
Is a grave wrong, and ne'er to be redeemed
By penal statutes and the prisoner's cell.
We leave the mind unfortified by Truth,
And wonder it should fill with wayward Error.
There's no blank ignorance, as many dream;
Each soul will have its growth and garnering.
As the uncultured prairie bears a harvest
Heavy and rank, yet worthless to the world,
So mind and heart uncultured run to waste;
The noblest natures serving but to show
A denser growth of passion's deadly fruit.
Another error of our social state--
We charter sin when chartering temptation.
We see the ensnarer, like a spider, sit
Weaving his web; and we permit the work.
How many souls Intemperance has destroyed,
Lured to his den by opportunities
The law allows! The prisoner at the bar
Is one of these unhappy instances.
The testimony offered here has shown
He bore a character unstained by crime.
Nay, more--an active, honest, prudent man,
Prisoner, you have appeared, since you came here
Five years ago. You came with us to share,
In this free land, the blessings we enjoy;
Blessings by law secured, by law sustained;
The impartial law that, like the glorious sun,
Sends from its central light a beam to all,
And binds in magnet interest all as one.
And you had married here, and were a father
And prospered in your plans, and all was well.
Nay, more--'tis proved you had a generous heart,
And had been kind to your poor countrymen,
The homeless emigrants who gather here,
Like men escaped from sore calamities,
Where only life is saved from out the wreck.
And one of these, an early friend, who died
Beneath the kindly shelter of your roof,
Left to your care his precious orphan child--
His only child, his motherless, his daughter.
And you received the gift, and vowed to be
A father to the little lonely one.
Where is that orphan now?--Must I go on?
'Tis not to harrow up your trembling soul.
I would not lay a feather on the weight
Stern memory brings to crash the guilty down.
But I would