defy investigation. I proposed to the solicitor in the outset, that an auditor should be sent to Maine to investigate this matter fully. If it cannot be shown that all he has, or all he has had, is the result of his honest and hard earnings, I will consent that they may go to prison.

"I now feel, may it please your Honor, that my duty in this case has been performed. I entertain no more doubt of the innocence of these four men, than I do of my own. During this examination, I have already said I had fears, not from testimony, but from the forestalling of opinion out of doors. The pressure has been from without. Public sentiment has been cheated, misled, abused. From the evidence itself, I can fear nothing. Before no jury can they incur the least danger. Yet, should they be sent to the gloomy cells of the prison, I tremblingly apprehend that over the remains of my younger friend, whose feeble frame is before me, the cold clods will rest before the day of trial shall arrive. Then will his fiend-like pursuers have accomplished one purpose; and not satisfied with this, they may perhaps, like harpies, go to his grave, and with the ferocity of the hyena, howl and scratch over his remains. His eldest brother, Asa, is here to-day, ruined in property and broken in spirit, with nothing to live for but his wife and children. Yet he must be sent to prison, because there must be a victim —not because any one can believe him guilty, but because there must be a triumph. Triumph! what

a word to be used on an occasion like this, when the personal liberty of men, nay, their lives, are ultimately involved! The scope and effect of such a decision, I have no language to express. While they are here to-day, there are sorrow and weeping at that home outraged by their absence.

"My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall,

Along the bordering lake,

And when they on their father call,

What answer shall she make?'

"He is in Amherst jail.' 'Why,' asks his child, with earnest gaze, 'was my father guilty of crime?' 'No, my son, but they have pursued him with bloodhound ferocity. They have raked the purlieus of houses of correction and of prisons in New-Hampshire and Massachusetts, and upon the testimony of felons charged him.'

"Did it not almost seem to the Court, when that tittering, fiend-like prostitute, Eliza Jane Smith, and others hardly less vile, succeeded each other upon the stand, that the government must have swept the great ultimate prison house of unreclaimed atrocity and unforgiven crime with a drag-net?

"Sir, if these men are to be committed, they are to be held not only without evidence, but against evidence. They are to be ground down beneath the iron heel of oppression.

"I have been told that the warning of Lochiel was ringing in my ears. If these men are oppressed farther, there are those to whom the warning of the

seer will yet be applicable, in those ears it will ring like a funeral knell

"Wo! wo to the riders that trample them down.'

"I have now done my duty-all I need and can do-poorly and feebly at best, but sir, all I can do -and the responsibility now rests with you and the Government.'

The prisoners were triumphantly acquitted.

CHAPTER X.

General Pierce at Home-His Family-His Popularity—Anecdote— His Generosity-Personal Appearance-The Compromise Question—Nominated to the Presidency by the N. H. Democracy-Declines-Letter to Colonel Lally.

CONCORD, the residence of General Pierce, is one of the most retired, most beautiful of all the inland towns of New-England. Containing about ten thousand inhabitants, surrounded by an industrious population of agriculturists, it combines the advantages of a residence in the city and country. The streets are wide, and lined with pleasant shade trees; the beautiful Merrimac flows pleasantly through the town; the winds in the summer are fresh and cool, from the heights of the White Mountains, and, in short, it is one of the pleasantest summer homes in the Union. The law office of General Pierce is situated upon Main Street. His law-partner, Mr. Minot, is a young but able and gentlemanly man. General Pierce has no home at present, as with his wife and child, he boards at a private house in the southern part of the village.

In November, of 1834, during his second year in Congress, General Pierce married Jane Means, the youngest child of Rev. Dr. Appleton, late President of Bowdoin College. This was the result of an in

timacy formed while he was studying law at Amherst, which was the residence of her maternal relatives. They have had three children, and all of them sons. The first of these died in infancy; the second, Frank Robert, a lovely and beautiful child, died in 1844, at the age of five years; and the youngest now lives at Concord with his parents. His name is Benjamin, and he is eleven years old. Mrs. Pierce is an accomplished woman, but of late years has suffered much from poor health. The death of Frank Robert was a terrible stroke upon her, and she has never completely recovered from it. Ever since, she has been more or less of a pensive, melancholy disposition, exceedingly retired and modest. General Pierce is beloved by his family, and indeed he is one of the most devoted of husbands and fathers. For the sake of his wife he has often relinquished the highest honors which were pressed upon him; for her sake he has retired from the highest places to the stillness and quietude of a life in the country.

It has been our great pleasure to see General Pierce at home among his people in "the old Granite State," and we were surprised to discover with what universal affection he is held. His popularity in New-Hampshire is unbounded-his name never is mentioned without the greatest enthusiasm. During his campaign in Mexico, General Pierce was loved as well as admired by the soldiers under his command. Shortly after the war was brought to a