"Items of a different class :-It is very common here for the police, and other slave hunting knaves, to play tricks on slave holders. I will give you a few samples. One police firm has in pay, over twenty colored spies here, besides others in Philadelphia and elsewhere. Their business is to inveigle slaves to run away, hide them up, and betray them.— When the master misses his slave, he soon advertises his $100 reward; often he applies to this very police firm for aid! In a few days they are ready, of course, to hand over the poor victim of their arts, and pocket the reward, besides getting praise as very vigilant officers! They once had in their pay an active member of a northern vigilance committee, who is well known to me. He is not now on the committee.

"Another trick is somewhat similar. The colored people, for ten miles round, are induced to come to Baltimore, on the Sabbath, to see their friends, and attend church. The constable, desirous of raising the wind, finds one without a pass, puts him in jail, or some place of confinement-sometimes one of the slave prisons-says nothing about it till the master offers his reward; and then Mr. Constable coolly pockets the reward of his knavery. Besides, the slave, as a suspected runaway, is commonly sold to the traders at a low price, and the trader, out of pure gratitude (!) gives the officer another fee. I defeated one such precious scheme since my imprisonment, by writing to the slaveholder-a humane man-and thus saved a pious slave from being torn from his family for life. I got two enemies by it.

"Another trick is managed by the connivance of the jail keepers. A runaway is put in jail, and the keepers, for a specified fee, ($5,00,) give exclusive notice to a particular trader of the fact. This gives the trader a chance to negotiate with the master, at a distance, and get his slave at half price, buying him on the wing.' This has often been done this summer. One of the visitors of the jail, to whom I mentioned

it, defended it as a customary perquisite of the prison officers.

6

"Another perquisite' of these gentry, is twenty per cent. of the fees for all the cases they are able to give a lawyer, with whom a bargain is previously made. Of course, none but a very inferior lawyer would degrade himself by making such a bargain. This summer, a very amusing quarrel took place between our keepers and their legal coadjutor, as to the honesty of the latter in paying over the proper share of the fees! They tried to drive a bargain with another-one of my friends-but received no countenance from him. You see the art of 'sponging' is not altogether to be classed among the 'lost arts' of a primeval world.

"These hungry animals are very ready to plunder the slaveholder; they do it often, of course; they will not scruple to do the like with the free colored man, and others of the more defenceless classes. I believe I owe not a little of the brutality and vile reports of which I have been the object, to the vengeance of parties whom I disappointed of such profits since my imprisonment. I am not sorry for any thing of that kind I have done. God did not endow me with the capacity of sitting still and seeing the poor trampled on, and knavery prospering on their woes. Otherwise, I should have pursued the career of profitable conservatism, to which Dr. Woods tried so hard to allure me! That I should have pleased God by so doing, I may well doubt. Farewell; let the slave be always in your heart, and do not quite forget, in my prison, your brother,

CHARLES T. TORREY.

To his friend, J. M. McKim, of Philadelphia, he also writes, in view of his approaching trial:

"My Dear McKim,-Yours, dated October 30, and mailed November 16, reached me to-day. To-morrow I am to

be carted over to Court for trial. My trial will not, I suppose, be urged before Friday, possibly, not till Monday next. But it is probable this is the last letter you will receive from me for years. So strong is the web of perjury around me, that I have no real hope of acquittal, especially as the trial is to be suddenly pushed on, after a formal agreement once made to defer it till next term.

"I will thank you to acknowledge the receipt for me, of the six dollars you enclosed, from the friends whom I never saw, but to whom I am grateful for their kindness. My imprisonment in the Penitentiary will entirely prevent the trial before the Supreme Court. I consider, therefore, that nearly every useful purpose of my imprisonment, to the cause, is lost. I know there will be indignation' meetings, speeches, and resolves; that my name, for a while, will give point to now and then an eloquent sentence. But, as to any serious effort for my relief, it will be like 'Big Ben,' in Bucks county. When the three hundred and fifty dollars, to rescue him, were wanted, he was discovered to be a bad man.* He was good food for agitation, but no object of practical benevolence. Don't say I am unjust, or bitter: I am neither. But I estimate human nature as it is. It is true, I have many, MANY friends. I have slanderers, I have enemies enough, but, go where you will, where I am known, and you will find some of the very best men and women in the world, who are warmly attached to me. I thank God for it; and their prayers may secure me an abundant supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ in my prison. Still, I expect to be forgotten by most persons. Even those who love me will be absorbed in new cares, new duties.

66

Happily, God is multiplying similar cases to such an extent that Abolitionists will not be able to refuse any longer, to discuss or embrace better principles on the points involved,

* Our friend does not seem to know that "Big Ben" was redeemed; six hundred dollars were paid for him.-J. M. McKim.

than those now current among the mass of them. They must learn the DUTY of making wise plans, and executing them for the personal rescue of the poor of the land from bondage; just as we would do if our own family relatives were the bondsmen. I intended to write something on this subject, for the press, but I shall not have time now. Perhaps I shall make out a sketch before I close.

"My bodily health is better. I sleep pretty well, have a good appetite, and digest light food well. My neuralgia, however, continues, with frequent and severe pain. My strength is increasing, slowly, though a very little exertion sends me to bed. With your arm, perhaps I could walk from No. 31, to Chesnut street, if I had the chance! I am afraid Maryland will not make money by my weaving silk, for a long while to come!

I

"At all events, my physical comforts will not be diminished by the change to the Penitentiary. Ah-the 'reformed' system of prison discipline, with its horrible secret scourgings, shower baths, and six days starvings, (which no man wholly escapes)—these ARE charming prospects ahead ! tell you, McKim, more than one-third of those who are in our reformed prisons two years and more, leave them so impaired in both bodily and mental health, as to be but one short remove from imbecility of mind and actual sickness of body. It is only by frequent pardons that the per centage of insanity and death in these reformed' prisons, is kept so low as it appears in the reports. The silence, the enforced mental inaction, the prevention of all activity of the affections, the social nature; these directly, and powerfully, tend to overthrow the mind, to make it imbecile—while the physical cruelties are enough to break down any nervous or feeble frame. I have been gradually gathering facts on that subject for years, and did hope, this winter, to prepare an elaborate essay on it, for the press. What a host of intentions a prison shuts up!

"Am I happy? Yes, on the whole-these ten days my

dear wife has cheered my poor cell with her smiles-for she will not let me see her shed any tears, lest it make me unhappy. Nor will she speak save cheerfully. The woman is THE GLORY of the man.' But, in prospect of being shut out from all the world, from all society, I am not unhappy-for the presence and spirit of our blessed Saviour are not withheld from me. The most painful emotions I feel in regard to it, are, that I am to be condemned to a useless existence; no activity for the good of others or my own. I shall be thirty-one years old, the day after the morrow, the 21st. The most useful part of life I must spend in prison. But God did not need me, in His service, in freedom, and therefore it is I am in prison. When Peter was wanted, the angel came and opened his prison doors; but when he had done his work, he was not rescued from the cross. Perhaps God will yet make my prison the day-star of hope to the slaves of Maryland and Virginia. I shall not be very unhappy in solitude-that most awful of all solitudes, compulsory silence from year to year-so long as God gives me his love and his spirit. Those who are free must labor the more diligently for the suffering slave."

CHAPTER XI.

TRIAL OF MR. TORREY.-CONVICTION.

Mr. Torrey was taken from the jail in Baltimore and conducted to the court-house for trial, Nov. 29, 1844. Reverdy Johnson, Esq., undertook the defence of Mr. Torrey; but we must say that he appeared far more anxious to defend Maryland, than to obtain a good deliverance for Mr. Torrey.

While awaiting his trial at the court-house, expecting every moment to be arraigned, a cordial was administered to