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 printed in italics—­while dealing with English Items—­are so done to show that they are quotations from the eulogies of the American press.  They are as thoroughly repudiated by me as they must be by every American gentleman.]

[Footnote BK:  Did Mr. Ward ever read any account in the gazettes of his own country, of the poor soldiers going to “Washington to procure land warrants, and after being detained there till they were reduced to beggary, receiving no attention?  Let me commend the following letter, taken from the press of his own country, dated July 6, 1853, and addressed to the President:—­