In the second place, Mr. Darg had subjected Barney Corse to a great deal of trouble and expense; and Friend Hopper thought it no more than fair that expenses caused by his own treachery should be paid from his own pocket.  In the third place, David Ruggles, a worthy colored man, no way implicated in the transaction, had been arrested, and was likely to be involved in expense.  In the fourth place, the police officers, who advised the arrest of Barney Corse, made themselves very conspicuous in the persecution.  He believed they had been actuated by a desire to obtain the reward for themselves; and as they had no just claim to it, he determined to defeat them in this attempt.  He therefore sued for the reward himself, though he never intended to use a dollar of it.  This was manifested at the time, by a declaration in the newspapers, that if he recovered the reward, he would give all over the expenses to some benevolent society.  It was frequently intimated to him that there should be no further proceedings against him, if he would withdraw this suit; but he constantly replied that a trial was what he wanted.  Finding all overtures rejected, a complaint was laid before the Grand Jury; and such was the state of popular prejudice, that twelve out of nineteen of that body concurred in finding a bill against men of excellent moral character, without any real evidence to sustain the charge.  Barney Corse had never taken measures to prevent the arrest of Thomas Hughes.  He simply declined to render any assistance.  He believed that he was under no legal obligation to do otherwise; and he knew for a certainty that he was under no moral obligation; because conscience would not allow him to aid in returning a runaway slave to his master.  Nevertheless, he and Isaac T. Hopper, and James S. Gibbons, were indicted for “feloniously receiving, harboring, aiding and maintaining said Thomas, in order that he might escape from arrest, and avoid conviction and punishment.”  Friend Hopper was advised that he might avail himself of some technical defects in the indictment; but he declined doing it; always insisting that a public investigation was what he wanted.

The trial was carried on in the same spirit that characterized the previous proceedings.  A colored man, known to have had dishonest possession of a portion of the lost money, was admitted to testify, on two successive trials, against Barney Corse, who had always sustained a fair character.  The District Attorney talked to the jury of “the necessity of appeasing the South.”  As if convicting an honest and kind-hearted Quaker of being accomplice in a felony could do anything toward settling the questions that divided North and South on the subject of slavery!  One of the jury declared that he never would acquit an abolitionist.  Mr. Darg testified of himself during the trial, that he never intended to manumit Thomas, and had made the promise merely as a means of obtaining his money.  The newspapers spoke as if the guilt of the accused was not to be doubted, and informed the jury that the public expected them to convict these men.