[The {038}story of Mr Colt, of which our Lay contains merely the sequel,
is this: A New York printer, of the name of Adams, had the effrontery
to call upon him one day for payment of an account, which the
independent Colt settled by cutting his creditor's head to fragments
with an axe. He then packed his body in a box, sprinkling it with salt,
and despatched it to a packet bound for New Orleans. Suspicions having
been excited, he was seized and tried before Judge Kent. The trial is,
perhaps, the most disgraceful upon the records of any country. The
ruffian's mistress was produced in court, and examined, in disgusting
detail, as to her connection with Colt, and his movements during the
days and nights succeeding the murder. The head of the murdered man was
bandied to and fro in the court, handed up to the jury, and commented on
by witnesses and counsel; and to crown the horrors of the whole
proceeding, the wretch's own counsel, a Mr Emmet, commencing the defence
with a cool admission that his client took the life of Adams, and
following it up by a de-tail of the whole circumstances of this most
brutal-murder in the first person, as though he himself had been the
murderer, ended by telling the jury, that his client was "_entitled to
the sympathy_ of a jury of his country," as "a young man just entering
into life, _whose prospects, probably, have been permanently blasted_."
Colt was found guilty; but a variety of exceptions were taken to the
charge by the judge, and after a long series of appeals, which _occupied
more than a year from the date of conviction_, the sentence of death was
ratified by Governor Seward. The rest of Colt's story is told in our
ballad.]