And all this may possibly depend on the world. Even the graves of our departed pioconduct of this generation. Then let us all, neers are generally undistinguished and unhere under this metropolitan sky, make, for known. We tread, daily, on their ashes unourselves and our children, a sacramental conscious and unmoved. Already we have pledge that we will try to promote the final embalmed their memories in our nursery tales triumph of Light over Darkness, and of Right and begin to look on them as the legend heover Might; and that, so far as, under Provi-roes of a romantic age obscured by time. We dence, the event may depend on our conduct, ourselves must soon sleep with our fathers, Kentucky's twinned ensign, with its motto unchanged, shall bathe in the rays of millennial sunshine.

and be to earth as if we had never been;-and our children and their children will soon follow us and repose with the nations of forgotten Our institutions, too, and even this beloved country of ours, and all it contains, must perish forever.

But the fashion of this world, like the shad-dead. ow of a cloud, flitteth away. Mutability and decay are inscribed on all things earthly. Thebes, and Tyre, and Palmyra, and Babylon, Yet we have hopes that ar eimmortal-interthe downfall of empires, and the ruins of the ests that are imperishable-principles that are old world, are not the only memorials of this indestructible. Encouraged by those hopes, solemn truth. In sepulchral tones it is echoed stimulated by those interests, and sustained by from wastes of time scattered over our own and sustaining those principles, let us, come continent. Successive generations who, ages what may, be true to God, true to ourselves, ago, inhabited this fair land, have passed away and faithful to our children, our country, and and left not a trace of their destiny behind. mankind. And then, whenever or wherever it Here and there a mound of earth attests that may be our doom to look, for the last time, on they once were;-but all else concerning them earth, we may die justly pround of the title of is buried in oblivion. Tradition tells not their "Kentuckian," and, with our expiring breath, tale. The signers of our Declaration of Inde- may cordially exclaim-Kentucky, as she was; pendence, and the signers of the Constitution-Kentucky, as she is;--Kentucky, as she will of the United States, are all gone to another be;-KENTUCKY FOREVER.

36

PRELECTION.

In the Spring of the year, 1844, Dr. Abner Baker-a graduate of the Louisville Medical College, and born in Clay county, Ky., 26th March, 1813-was married to a daughter of James White, of said county, and who was a brother of John White, once speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States. Baker and his wife lived with Daniel Bates, whose wife was Baker's sister. Shortly after the marriage, he charged Bates, and her own father, and others, with illicit intercourse with her, (Baker's wife) and sometimes in his own presence. And, apprehending also that Bates was seeking his life, he killed him by a pistol shot, and went immediately to James White's, and proclaimed and exulted in the act! He was tried by an examining court, and acquitted on the ground of insanity. He then was taken to Cuba for health, under the advice of medical and other friends. Bates, not dying immediately after the shot, published a will, by which he bequeathed $10,000, to be expended in the conviction of Baker. The executors procured from Gov. Owsley a proclamation offering a high reward for the apprehension of Baker during his absence in the South. On being advised of the proclamation, Baker's family brought him back to Clay county, and surrendered him to the custody of the law, to answer an indictment for murder. Though the prosecuting party, composed of influential and wealthy men, had a decided sway in that small and frontier county, Baker's counsel and friends, feeling confident that he could not be convicted, declined to move for a change of venue, and went into the trial in July, 1845. The executors employed W. H. Caperton, Silas Woodson, and

Caldwell, to aid the official attorney for the commonwealth, W. B. Moore. The jury (under duress, as many believed) returned a verdict of guilty, and Judge Quarles overruled a motion for a new trial. The following appeals to the Governor were then made for a pardon. In addition to which, petitions signed by numerous multitudes of citizens of several counties, and by lawyers, among the most eminent of Kentucky, were also laid before the Governor, baeked by strong and thrilling addresses to him by Baker's father, and brothers, and sister, (Mrs. Cozier) none of which will be herein republished.

To prevent escape the Governor had the jail, in which Baker was confined, guarded by about 200 men, under the command of Gen. Peter Dudley, of Frankfort. On the 18th of September, 1845--the 3rd of October being the day fixed for execution--Baker's father and his brother, H. Baker, believing that the Governor, who had not then intimated to them any decision on the petitions for a pardon, had the power to direct an inquisition, and that Gen. Dudley's troops would not obey a writ of habeas corpus from a Circuit Judge, submitted to him a petition for an inquest as to the then state of Baker's mind, on the ground, verified by affidavits, that he was then a maniac, and could not therefore, in that condition, be lawfully executed. The Governor requested Mr. Crittenden, Secretary of State, to request from Mr. Robertson, as counsel for Baker, a statement of the reasons why he thought that the power to do what

was asked was in the Executive. Mr. R. instantly communicated his reasons, but received no response from the Governor. Believing afterwards that orders had been despatched to Gen. Dudley for the execution of Baker, Judge Buckner was applied to for a writ of habeas corpus, for the purpose of having the inquisition. He granted it; but, satisfied that it would not be obeyed without the Governor's sanction, wrote to him accordingly-but the Governor declined doing any thing, and it was then (only a day before that of the execution) too late to do anything more for the rescue of the unfortunate Baker, who fell a victim to ignorance, prejudice, and his own unquestionable insanity of mind.

The following extracts are republished from a book, entitled, "BAKER'S TRIAL." The object of the republication of them here is to show that Mr. ROBERTSON's speech, which succeeds them, was sustained in its facts and its principles, and that his doomed client ought to have been sent to a Lunatic Asylum, as a maniac, instead of being hung as a murderer.

TRIAL OF DR. ABNER BAKER.

To Governor Ousley:

The undersigned asks leave to make the following representations to your Excellency, respecting the case of Dr. A. Baker, lately tried for the killing of D. Bates. Having attended the trial, examined the accused, and heard the evidence, he trusts that the following facts and deductions will be accredited

her, there in his presence. He alleged that Bates had gotten his (Baker's) young sisterwith child. He asserted that, at Lancaster, about a month after the marriage, his wife had an abortion, which was shown by other testimony to have been impossible. He said, and persisted in declaring that, at Lancaster, his mother, every night, after he and his wife On examination, he found said Baker in a were asleep, opened their chamber door, uphigh state of mental and physical excitement- stairs, and let another man into his wife, his pulse quicker than natural, his extremities whom one night he made jump through a wincool-his countenance wild and unnatural-dow, by drawing his pistol on him. He also the muscles of his face flaccid and of a pecu-charged his mother with keeping a licentious liar hang; and his eyes, when a particular sub- house. He stated to two of his brothers that ject was alluded to, becoming singularly wild and red, as if radiating red rays, and his conversation incoherent, erratic and irrational. From his appearance, his condition and his conversation alone, I would not doubt that he was insane.

he tried the teacher's sign on a married lady in Knoxville, whom the teacher had educated, and that she understood the signs perfectly. He denies insanity, and says he would rather be shot than acquitted on that ground--insisted that he was able to prove every fact he had ever stated, and was offended with his counsel because they would not defend him in that way alone. Many other facts of a similar character were proved; and, from all the facts, I did not doubt that he labored under an insane delusion as to his wife and Bates; and under the influence of a morbid derangement of the brain, imagined facts that did not exist; for the supposed existence of which there was no evidence whatever, and of the falsehood of which no argument or proof could convince him; because a diseased brain communicated false images and distorted objects, which made all the impression on the mind that the evidence of sound sense could make as to what is true.

I have no doubt that the killing of Bates was the offspring of that insane delusion-was the act of a deranged mind, and would never have occurred if Baker's mind had not been deranged.

But the facts proved on the trial, independently of the foregoing circumstances, would leave no room for doubt, that Dr. Baker was insane as to his wife and Daniel Bates, when and before he killed the latter. Among other facts, it was proved that, before the marriage of the Doctor, his father and other members of the family apprehended that he was insane; and after the marriage, and before the killing of Bates, his father communicated confidentially to others, and in a letter to his sons at Knoxville, Tennessee, that he was insane. He (the Doctor) believed that Bates and others had combined to prevent his marriage, and to destroy his reputation and his life. He believed that Bates maltreated his sister, (the wife of Bates,) and was endeavoring to take her life; and that it was necessary for him to remain in the family to protect her. He believed that Bates was attempting his own life, and had also employed his slaves to assassinate him. A few days after his marriage, he published the conviction that his wife, when It was also proved that, after Baker had not more than nine years of age, had been left Kentucky, he returned to settle his affairs. prostituted by the gentleman who was her and that before he got to Bate's furnace, which teacher, and whom he charged also with pros- he had to pass, he was informed by several tituting, in like manner, his whole school, or persons that Bates had said he would nearly the whole-and all the circumstances kill him on sight if he ever returned, and that of manner, time, place. and signs, he imagined Bates and his negroes were armed for that and stated most. minutely. He also charged purpose; and he was advised to postpone passmany other persons with illicit intercourse ing the furnace until after night. I believe with his wife, some time before, and some that he was convinced that Bates would kill time after marriage-and among them was an him unless he should kill Bates first. It also uncle, an ugly negro, his brother-in-law, appeared that he expressed the conviction Bates, and her own father. He imagined and that he had violated no law of Heaven or asseverated that Bates and her father came to earth. He made no attempt to escape, but enthe bed in which he and his wife were sleep-deavored to go to his wife's father's, and ing, at Bate's house, and had intercourse with missing the way, staid all night at Hugh

White's, and seemed unconscious of having done any wrong in killing Bates.

This is a novel and interesting case. It will be reported and become a leading case; There was no testimony showing any mo- and allow me to say that, in my undoubting tive for hostility to Bates, and a disposition to judgment, no case ever occurred which was kill him, except his convictions as to his treat- more entitled to the interposition of the execment of his wife, and of which supposed mis-utive, whose power to pardon was given for no treatment, there was no other evidence than class of cases more clearly than for such as his own statements, in either case.

That Baker believed, and yet believes firmly, all the facts he repeatedly stated respecting Bates and his wife, there can be no doubt. He urged his counsel to suffer him to prove them, all of which he insisted he could prove beyond question!. If he had been sane, and so unaccountably diabolical as to wish to destroy Bates and the character and happiness of his wife without any imaginable motive, he would have told tales more plausible-something that might have been believed; and surely he would not have charged Bates with impregnating his (Baker's) own young sister, or his mother with prostituting her house.

this.

I am well satisfied that no informed man could have heard the trial and seen Baker, without being convinced, beyond a doubt, that he is now insane, and was even more so when he killed his brother-in-law. And it does seem to me that he who, upon a full knowledge of all the facts, doubts Baker's insanity, would, by such incredulity, exhibit himself strong evidence of monomania-and I honestly think that the execution of Baker would be a judicial murder.

I never asked for the pardon of a convict, because the cases, in my judgment, are rare, in which the innocent are, through ignorance or passion, convicted. But I feel sure, beyond any doubt, that such has been the doom of Dr. Baker, and that he ought not to be punished, but placed, (as he will be, in the event of a pardon,) in our Lunatic Asylum, Respectfully,

G. ROBERTSON. Lexington, July 25, 1845.

Postscript.

But

Ever since the case of Hadfield, in 1794, persons in Baker's condition, have been in variably acquitted or pardoned--and a stronger case than Baker's does not appear in either medical or criminal jurisprudence. If you have any doubt as to the case of Baker, I would be obliged to you to examine carefully Ray's Medical Jurisprudence on Insanity, and Esquirol and the case of Hadfield-that also of Lord Orford, and of the man who shot at President Jackson; in all of which cases there did not know that a transcript of the evidence P. S. The foregoing was written when I were acquittals on the ground of insane deluon the trial, would be laid before you. sion on one subject or more, whilst there was apparent rationality on others; and in none of having been since furnished with a certified which was there any inquiry as to whether copy of that evidence, I present to you that as the accused had a general knowledge of right more satisfactory than my synopsis of it. But, or wrong; but in all of which, it was taken for as Dr. Cross' opinion was formed on this gengranted that the act being the offspring of in-eral statement of mine, I must, for the benefit sanity, the accused, as to that act, should be treated as he should have been, had he been totally insane on all subjects. There is, in no asylum, one case in twenty in which the lunatic does not reason well and is not rational on some subjects. Intellectual insanity is, in fact, nothing else than the morbid imagination of false facts. The reasoning of lunatics is generally correct-their premises only are false, being merely imaginary.

of the opinion of that eminent gentleman, ask your attention to this statement, for the purpose of seeing that Dr. C.'s opinion on those facts, would certainly be his opinion on the certified evidence. And I think that I hazard nothing in the opinion that no intelligent jurist or medical man could be found, who would entertain any other opinion when possessed of fall information on the subject.

G. R.

Opinion of Dr. Jas. C. Cross, on the Synopsis of evidence prepared by Geo. Robertson, Esq. From the statement within made of the

The jury, as you will see from their petition, were satisfied of Baker's insanity-but found him guilty because he was rational on some subjects! It is almost impossible to make a jury understand such a case correctly; and, in facts, and which Judge Robertson assures me this case, it was impossible to procure a jury for the murder of Daniel Bates, I have no heswere proved on the trial of Dr. Abner Baker, that had not been excited against the prison-itation in saying that said Baker is, and er, and formed an opinion of his guilt. Even the judge, and all the four prosecuting attor- was at the time of the murder, laboring under neys, at first, denied the existence of particu- monomania, if, indeed, there has not been a lar insanity or unsoundness of mind on particular subjects. But they all, I believe, (and the Commonwealth's Attorney, I know,) became convinced of it during the trial. And I have no doubt that a jury of enlightened med-be ical men or jurists, could not have been selected who would have hesitated five minutes to find a verdict of not guilty.

complete subversion of the faculty of judging between what is right and wrong. This being the case, Baker cannot be regarded as responsible for his conduct, and therefore, should not subjected to the penalty which has been decreed by the jury.

JAMES C. CROSS, Late Prof. in the Med. School of Transylvania.