veys and resist proprietors in enforcing claims to their lands; and because of this was regarded as a traitor deserving death, because of having violated his oath in the first particular. The charge to the jury was made by the junior justice, Parker, whose summing up of the evidence appeared to leave no escape to the eight prisoners. After many hours of deliberation, the jury came into court and inquired whether, if they " were agreed as to some of the prisoners," but not " as to the rest," the verdict would be received as far as they were agreed. The court de clined to receive a verdict unless it should include all the prisoners. To the apprehension of the average jury man, this ruling does not quite fit the facts. In the first place, the victim had received only a bullet wound, from which he died, while only three guns were fired; second, of the nine assailants, only three carried guns, three being armed with pistols, and the remaining three bearing scythes bound on short poles. It was evident, therefore, that six who could be pointed out, and two who could not be pointed out, were not mur derers, but accomplices only in the crime. The offence of the first three was different to that of the others. Further, there ap pears no reason why the entire eight, if dis charged as not guilty of murder, should not have been held for a lesser crime. The ruling of the court, and its neglect in not ordering the prosecution of the offenders on another charge, virtually vindicated them not only from the murder, but from complicity therein. Neither was there any notable ef fort made thereafter to apprehend that one of the band who not only did not give him self up, but absconded previous to the sur render of the others, thus causing the in ference that he knew himself to be the guilty person. There is in the action of the court a sug gestion that it regarded the murder as a secret-society penalty, — the act of a com
munity, — as difficult to be fixed upon any one in particular as a railroad disaster, from bad condition of road or rolling stock, is to fix upon a whole corporation or a board of directors. In an admonition to the prison ers, also given by Judge Parker, the duties and the advantages of the citizens in a free commonwealth, and the most unfortunate condition of those who forfeit their rights, are set forth with admirable clearness, force and compactness. This disturbance of the public peace in duced the enactment of a statute making it a high crime for any person to disguise him self in the likeness of an Indian, or other wise, with intent to molest a sheriff or sur veyor in the discharge of his duties. So the judicial proceedings in this case, and the subsequent action of the General Court, afford an eminent example of " how not to do it " with dignity and the desired effect. Surely no reader will assert that the sway of Massachusetts in the District of Maine was not a mild one. As to the Kennebec purchase, the violent among the settlers upon its lands were so impressed by these occurrences that there was no further forcible opposition to the legal readjustment of their boundaries. In a few years, indeed, the inhabitants of Malta grew so much ashamed of the rep utation of their town, that in 1820 they in duced the first legislature of the State of Maine to change its name to " Gerry." Un fortunately, it sometimes became necessary to add the explanation, " formerly Malta;" and they found themselves in a degree still tied to the old disgrace. By another change, in 1822, the town became Windsor; so that they were able to mention it as " formerly Gerry" with entire equanimity, — for in doing this they at once recalled and con demned a disreputable political action in a neighboring State, while their own Malta stain lay buried in shadow. George J. Varney.
