in criminal trials, gives an advantage to the State, more than equal to any existing in favor of the accused. The State's counsel is usually selected from the best of the Bar. In criminal trials he soon becomes the most astute, because always confined to that description of cases. He is, therefore, in a general way, always prepared for the particular case: and he goes into it, armed cap-a-pie for an encounter which he has had many times before. He may, therefore, be said to be armed and equipped, and to have chosen his ground, in advance of his adversary. Besides, he has other advantages. He has had opportunity of conversing with prosecutor and witnesses, and to know how the current of public sentiment

runs.

But with the criminal and his advocate, every thing is reversed. The criminal, if in prison, never goes into the courthouse, till the moment assigned for trial. If his counsel has consulted with him, it has been through the grates of his dark prison, in presence, perhaps, of a suspicious, scowling keeper; and other prisoners. If he has witnesses, they have been summoned, if at all, by some acquaintance or law-officer, with whom a cold discharge of the service, is a full performance of duty. The busy conversations of a prosecutor have, perhaps, filled the minds of those who are to be his judges, with deep-rooted prejudices against him. He is a stranger to them. He goes to trial conscious, possibly, of his innocence; and after making out the best case he can, is convicted by the concluding effort of the State's counsel. "I claim,' said Lord Coke, 'the last word for the King;' 'and,' said Sir Walter Raleigh, 'I claim the last word for my life!" Again, the charge of a Court is too frequently but a recapitulation of the enormity of the crime; the dreadful number that our age is witnessing, and the great obligation that juries are under to hang every man that comes in their way.

The second subject of reform, is the great disadvantage under which two men, charged with the same offence, go to trial. One may be a stranger; one well known. The last, whatever be his station, has his friends. But what friend has an unknown man, charged with an offence against the law? When the hue and cry is raised in a community, that an offender has been taken, who has not noticed the anxiety with which that community regards the offender? Who in the thickening crowd, pressing upon his footsteps, ever saw much, aye, any sympathy, manifested for him? Is not, in such

cases, the prejudice of all against him? This follows to his trial and almost always condemns him.

And we have frequently thought, that if the true intention of the law were followed out, that is, of administering laws in mercy, instead of the Legislature providing a State prosecutor, it should give the community a defender of persons charged with offences. The lives and liberties of citizens in prison, ought to be as much the objects of the care of the laws, as those of men who are not: and the law in writing over its temples, that "every man is innocent, until his guilt is proven," commits a fraud upon every unfortunate prisoner who is a stranger in the forum. For these are, as we have said, almost ever found guilty, on presumptions drawn from the fact that they are UNKNOWN.

Another matter materially connected with our theme, is the disregard of the comfort of men placed in prison preparatory to their trials. We hear much said of the comfort of convicts, but who looks to the comfort of the accused.

As the law never, if we believe its maxims, condemns a man beforehand, what right has it to punish him previous to his guilt being proved? And yet is not every jail in the whole country, a disgrace to the humanity of the age; a proof of the falsehood of the declarations of its law, and a great lazar-house of human suffering and crime? If the law by its power and authority arrests one, and casts him in prison, upon suspicion of crime, still upon every principle of justice and humanity, the person is entitled to kind treatment, and to have all his wants provided. Why, if a sheriff on a fieri facias takes a horse, he furnishes him comfortable quarters and a good keeper; but a suspected man, however innocent, with a single blanket, is turned into a narrow room, crowded with convicts, often black and white, to abide the tender mercies of a jail delivery upon twenty cents per day!

This is no fancy picture, but a reality to be seen anywhere. The writer has, himself, not long since met with an instance, which, if it were the only one which ever occurred, ought to have been provided against under the severest penalties.

A girl, fifteen years of age, with a form and countenance lovely enough to excite admiration, was taken up on suspicion of felony. The circumstances connected with her arrest, were sufficient to justify an apprehension, that a most base and rare instance of seduction had occurred.

She was

taken, in man's apparel, with a slave! Her mind was a blank, on which education, or the admonitions of a mother or father, had impressed no principle of knowledge, or trace of virtue. She was, however, in the infancy of guilt; and under proper direction, no doubt, her first step in life, instead of being into the veriest hell of crime, might have been on the path of innocence and chastity.

The writer of this article visited her. The only two rooms of the prison were filled, and in an entry she was chained to the floor. She lay upon a miserable pallet, during three or four bitter cold days and nights, without fire, covered with ragged clothing, the object of more human suffering and wretchedness and disgrace, than was ever before presented to one who has been often compelled to witness the miseries of prisons and prisoners. The very fact that she was suspected of a dreadful offence, made her the fittest object for the compassion of men, and the care of the law. To the compassion of men she was at last indebted for her release; but the law had abandoned her. It had failed to provide for just such cases as may occur.

Upon another occasion, the writer was induced to visit the prison, just at the close of a criminal Court. In a small room he found three women, one white and two slaves. One of the last was far advanced in pregnancy. The white female was stooping over a bundle of rags upon the floor, as the writer entered. On approaching, she was discovered ministering to an almost naked child, whose anxious, roving eyes, and bounding pulses, told it was in a violent paroxysm of fever. On enquiring the cause of her commitment, she answered she was placed there as a State's witness, because she could not give security for her appearance.

These instances, and they may be swelled to a considerable number, are not given with a view of casting any reflections upon the officers of the law. These only did their duty; but the tables of the law, did not contain a clause to prevent human suffering.

Had these two cases been detailed as events of the dark ages, or even as part of the inhuman tragedy of the French revolution, with a bold hand, used to depicting horrific pictures, they would have raised the voices of men in thanksgivings, that our age was exempt from such enormities. But, unfortunately, they are of our own day; a day celebra

ted for its claims to exclusive virtues, and the light it sheds upon the darkness of the age of our ancestors.

We are aware that, in this review, occasionally, we have drawn largely upon arguments which have been before presented to the public eye; but in frequently pointing to a picture, drawn by an abler hand, the spectator's taste may be improved, and kindest sympathies be aroused. If we effect this much for those unfortunate men, who feel the rigors of our criminal jurisprudence, we shall greatly have profited in repeating what others have taught.

ART. VI.-A Brief Enquiry into the true nature and character of our Federal Government: being a Review of Judge Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. By a Virginian. Petersburg: Edmund & Julian C. Ruffin. P. 132.

"LET me write a people's songs, and he who will may write their laws." The sagacity of this saying cannot be too much applauded. Before the discovery of the printing press, the only access to the minds of any people was through their ears. In those days, the orator was omnipotent; or, if his power admitted a rival, that rival was the minstrel. The arts of rhetoric, the graces of poesy, and the charms of music, were alike resorted to, as means of chaining attention, engaging sympathy, and enlisting the passions of the multitude. When the Spartans asked a General of the Athenians, the latter sent them, in derision, a lame old poet. He knew nothing of the art of war, but the spirit of the soldier was in his breast; and he breathed it into his burning lines, and infused it into the hearts of the Spartans; and roused them, by the memory of their old renown, to rival the deeds of their fathers, and to render the name of Sparta more glorious than it had ever been.

The press has lent its aid to diffuse the influence, and perpetuate the fame of the orator and poet; but it has, at the same time, become the rival of both. No man can be an orator or a poet, who is not born so; and the rare and marvellous endowments necessary to the constitution of either character, gave, to those who possessed them, a divided em

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pire over the minds of men. This monopoly of intercourse with the public mind they no longer enjoy; and now, thanks to the press, it may be successfully approached by the sober moralist, the stern jurist, and the homely utilitarian, through an avenue open alike to all.

Yet the essential wisdom of the adage quoted above is not even now to be questioned. The same idea may be expressed in other words, with equal truth, at this day. What is that idea? That he who commands the avenues, through which alone the minds of a people may be reached, exercises over them a power greater than that of the mere written law. In this reading age, that avenue is the press; and it is as true at this day, as that adage ever was, that "he who writes a people's books, need not care who makes their laws.”

Of the truth of this, the history of the constitution and government of the United States affords a remarkable and interesting proof. Every one versed in political science perfectly understands why it is that the business of authorship in the United States has heretofore been left to northern writers. But whatever be the cause, such has been the fact, and the consequenees have been such as might have been anticipated. Books, intended to form the minds, the habits, and the manners of the rising generation, are put into the hands of our children; and, in these, we look in vain for any lessons adapted to such of our institutions, and the relations growing out of them, as are peculiar to ourselves. There is nothing, for example, in any other society, analagous to the relation between the white child and his negro nurse, or that between the half-grown boy and the gray-headed family servant. Yet, from these it is that we imbibe some of our best, as well as earliest lessons of feeling and of manners; and these lessons it should be, in part, the office of the schoolbook to enforce and ratify. On this point, however, all we have are silent; or, if they speak, it is in profound ignorance of the subject. All connected with it, that the boy finds in books, is at variance with his experience; and this contrariety of influences produces confusion in his mind, caprice in his feelings, and inconsistency in his conduct. We are persuaded, that a book made up of authentic anecdotes of the incidents of the nursery, and the adventures of my young master, in the servants' hall, and the stable yard, would be one of the most amusing and instructive that could be compiled. What a theme for the candid mind of Mrs. Sigourney,