competitive examinations had already opened the avenues of rank
and power to all, by teaching the candidates how to maintain the
principles of liberty and equality they had learned from Confucius
and Mencius. This absence of an hereditary nobility neutralized
the evils and crippled the power of caste and slavery, which would
perhaps have grown out of such a form of feudalism. Finally, the
great respect paid to parents and superiors, the social status of
women, the legal safeguards of life and property, and the possession
of a fertile soil, temperate climate, and rich resources-all these
taken together appear to satisfactorily account for the permanency
and character of Chinese institutions.

All that these institutions need, to secure and promote the high-
est welfare of the people, as they themselves aver, is their faith-
ful execution in every department of government: and no higher
evidence of their remarkable wisdom can be adduced than the
general order and peace of the land. When one sees the injustice
and oppressions in the courts, the feuds and deadly fights among
the clans, the prevalence of lying, ignorance, pollution, and other
more serious crimes, and the unscrupulous struggle for a living
going on in every rank of life, he wonders that universal anarchy
does not destroy the whole machine. But the same truthful ex-
pounder of human society, which has been already quoted, furnishes
us with a partial solution in the declaration, "The powers that be
are ordained of God." The Chinese seem to have attained the great
ends of human government to as high a degree as it is possible for
man to go without the knowledge of his revelation. That, in its
great truths, its rewards or punishments, its hopes, and its stimulus
to good acts by faith working by love, has yet to be received by
them. The course and results of the struggle between the new and
the old in the land of Sinim will form a remarkable chapter in the
history of man.

S. WELLS WILLIAMS.

x

con yet new hew

THE TRIAL OF MRS. SURRATT.

FIFTEEN years have passed since that eventful day which witnessed the execution of a woman condemned to death by a military commission, for alleged participation in the murder of the President of the United States.

A generation of men and women has grown up since then, to whom the incidents and scenes surrounding the case are almost unknown.

A great war between the sections had just closed. The magnetic chieftain of the South, who had for so long held together the incongruous elements of the Confederate army by the magic of his name and presence, had finally surrendered at Appomattox to the foremost leader of the Union forces. The heart of the nation throbbed with joy. Exultant music filled the air. Flags and banners with peaceful mottoes festooned the cities of the restored Union, and illuminations, grand in conception and effective in result, turned night into day.

In the midst of this festive period of popular rejoicing, a calamity fell upon the nation that converted all its gladness into sorrow. Abraham Lincoln, the idol of the people-he who, by patient endurance and steadfast faith in the eventual restoration of the Union, by wise counsel and unswerving patriotism, had come to be considered the savior of the Union and a second Washington-suddenly, without warning, and in the midst of his family, seated in one of the private boxes of a theatre, fell by the shot of the assassin. No one not then living, and an eye-witness to the scenes that followed that dire event, can have any conception of the sudden change in popular feeling. But one idea possessed the multitude, and that was revenge; and, in the madness of the hour and an insane desire for retribution, the innocent were made to suffer for the

guilty. I was an eye-witness of this sudden and terrible revulsion of popular feeling that finally ended in the shedding of innocent blood. When it became known that Abraham Lincoln had fallen by the hand of an assassin, rage took possession of the populace; cries of vengeance filled the air; music, that a few hours before had been tuned to the high cadence of patriotic rejoicing, was now a mournful dirge; crape festooned banner and flag, and the grand illumination which had poured its blaze of light upon an exultant throng died out in the solemnity of the hour, and every vein and avenue of life was filled with lamentations at the national bereavement.

The death of the President and the attempted assassination of the Vice-President and Secretary of State were well calculated to fill the public mind with alarm. All of the Confederate forces had not laid down their arms. General Joe Johnston, with the remnant of that command which for prowess and gallantry had been unsurpassed by any army in history, was still in the field, but closely pursued by the forces in command of that renowned Federal General whose remarkable march through the Gulf States from "Atlanta to the sea" had disemboweled the Confederacy. No one knew what might be the effect of this assassination upon the dying Confederacy. By prompt and efficient measures taken to prevent internal dissension, all danger from that quarter passed, and the popular mind was left free to visit its vengeance upon the perpetrators of the foul crime. Had that vengeance been confined to the guilty, and retributive justice visited upon those whose guilt was established beyond doubt, as well by their own confession as by cumulative evidence, mankind would have been spared the shock and the judicial history of our country the stain which time can not efface, of the condemnation and execution of a woman whose innocence is now proclaimed. Passion, however, ruled the hour, and an insane desire for blood; and, as a sacrifice was demanded, instant means were adopted to achieve that end. The army was put in motion. Hundreds of details scoured the adjoining territory, and thousands of detectives peered into every nook and corner where a hidingplace might be discovered. Vast rewards of money and of high promotion were offered for the apprehension of Booth and his coconspirators. Space will not permit the story of his pursuit and death in the burning barn. Hundreds of the "suspected" were arrested, and the "old Capitol Prison" was filled to overflowing. . . . Among those whom Fate had rudely jostled within the grasp of an excited Administration was a woman, whose name and history

and sad end will descend to the latest generations of time-MARY E. SURRATT.

Mrs. Surratt had been born and nurtured under the "old system" in the State of Maryland. In the earlier years of her life she had been a belle in her county; and, at the period when, as her counsel, I had been brought into intimate relations with her, she was still a woman of fine presence and form. She had married a well-to-do man of the world, who, dying, bequeathed to her charge three children (two sons and a daughter), and a large plantation well stocked, and cultivated by numerous slaves; also, certain property in the city of Washington, which was destined to become the center of universal observation. This was her state and condition when the war between the sections began.

Her estate, being situated in the county of Marlborough, near the Federal capital, very early in the war began to suffer from the depredations of the army and its followers. One by one her slaves disappeared; her crops melted away, and the fences of her farmland were broken up and burned by troops camped upon its broad acres. Like all other property within the cordon of forts and lines of protection for the Federal capital, it soon became a barren waste, giving no means of support to tillers of the soil. The corps d'armée, and quartermaster's department, with its seductive remuneration, had absorbed all labor. The furrows that were upturned by them gave more promise of sudden wealth than golden grain.

In this state of affairs, bereft of the means of support for herself and family upon the familiar farm, she directed her steps to Washington, and occupied as a boarding-house the premises therein bequeathed by her husband.

Her family, save the youngest son, had reached maturity. Her eldest son, John, who had been a student of divinity in a Catholic college, as the war progressed, engaged in the adventurous pursuit of a blockade-runner between Montreal and Richmond and its intermediate points. When in Washington he was an inmate of his mother's home, and his companions, naturally, were men who sympathized with the South. His sister, young and graceful, attracted the attention of gentlemen of society, and among the frequent visitors was John Wilkes Booth, at that time reported to be betrothed to the daughter of a United States Senator.

It was alleged on the trial that this house was a secret rendezvous of those who plotted treason against the Government. If that be granted, still it can be asserted that, in all the pages of the record

of that trial, there can be found no testimony to show that Mrs. Surratt was cognizant of the same, or even participated in a single meeting. The testimony of Weichman-the one whom she had nurtured as a son, and who falsely swore her life away to save his own-nowhere reveals the fact that she ever participated in any plot, or was privy to the knowledge that in her house were planned the abduction and final assassination of that great man whose heart beat only with kindness and sympathy for all.

How the chain of untoward circumstances seemed to weave itself around this widowed and forlorn woman! It is said that "misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel's face." To me it seems there could be no angel's face in the dark cloud that gathered over this poor woman's life. There could have come no bright spirit in disguise to weave about her the web of misfortune that finally closed around her on the ignominious scaffold.

From the time that Booth gave Weichman the ten dollars to hire a buggy to convey Mrs. Surratt to Upper Marlborough CourtHouse, on the day preceding the night of the assassination, where she went on business connected with her estate, and was made by Booth the innocent bearer of a note and arms to a co-conspirator, who also perjured himself to save his worthless neck, to the second day after the murder of the President, when Lewis Payne, who had made the bloody assault upon the Secretary of State, knocked at her door disguised as a laborer with pick and shovel, the chain of unfortunate circumstances seemed to array itself against the unhappy woman. These two points were, in fact, the only ones of any importance whatever presented by the prosecution, through which they claimed to have established the connection of Mrs. Surratt with the plot to murder the President. One, as stated, was the transmission of a bundle containing a spy-glass and revolver from Booth to a co-conspirator at Surrattsville, on the day preceding the night of the murder. The facts connected with that charge, and which have never been questioned or disproved, and in the light of subsequent events have become fully established, are as follows: Mrs. Surratt had been greatly troubled about certain financial matters relating to her estate in Maryland. Relief had been suggested by a friend, a gentleman of character whom we called as a witness in the endeavor to establish the true cause of her visit to Marlborough Court-House, and at whose instance, by a letter which we offered in evidence, and was by him identified, she had been urged