and set on foot by Clay. A witness upon the trial of the conspirators, already referred to, says:

I frequently heard the subject of raids upon our frontier and the burning of cities spoken of by Thompson, Cleary, Tucker, and Sanders. Mr. Clement C. Clay was one of the prime movers in the matter before the raids were started. They received his direct indorsement.

Again in referring to the Saint Albans raid and the intended raids upon Buffalo and Rochester, the witness says:

I heard Mr. Clay say, in speaking about the funds for paying these raids, that he always had plenty of money to pay for anything that was worth paying for. I know that they had funds deposited in several different banks. They transacted considerable business with one bank, which is, I think, called the Niagara District Bank; it was almost opposite Mr. Clay's residence in Saint Catherines.

In this connection, also, may be noticed the testimony of R. A. Campbell, teller of the Ontario Bank of Montreal, that a check of the large amount of $50,000, drawn to Clay's order, was in August, 1864, received from the bank at Saint Catherines and placed in the Ontario Bank to the credit of Clay and Thompson. Of this class of crimes, which Clay is thus perceived to have inspired and directed, the burning of the city of New York was perhaps the most flagrant. For this gigantic scheme of arson, murder, and rapine there can be little doubt that Clay is morally as well as legally responsible. His frequent talk upon the subject of burning cities; his intimate association and confidental intercourse with Kennedy, and the declarations on the subject by the latter, made contemporaneously with his secret interviews with his chief, are circumstances which forbid any presumption other than that Clay was personally cognizant of the plot, and that it was undertaken with his full sanction, and probably under his superintendence. It may here be note that the concluding words of the confession of Kennedy prior to his execution may well be cited as illistrating the utter shallowness and shamelessness of the plea that the crimes of these raiders and of those under whose orders they proceeded were acts of legitimate warfare. This convict, after stating that he was sent to New York from Canada as the emissary and agent of the representatives of the rebellion in that country, and detailing the features of the proposed scheme of conflagration and ruin, says:

We desired to destroy property, not the lives of women and children; although that would, of course, have followed in its train.

2. As to his connection with the introduction of pestilence. Prominent among the deeds of infamy and treason with which the name of Clay, as an agent of the rebellion in Canada, is connected by the proof, is the plot for the destruction into the country of clothing infected with virulent contagious disease. The testimony in regard to Clay's personal complicity in this plot is brief, but most pointed. A witness upon the trial of the conspirators, other then those already referred to, in regard to the relations of Blackburn, by whom the clothing was prepared and packed, with the other leading rebels in Canada, says:

I have seen him, Blackburn, associating with Jacob Thompson, George N. Sanders; his son, Lewis Sanders; ex-Governor Westvott, of Florida; Lewis Castleman, William C. Cleary, Mr. Portfield, Captain Magruger, and a number of rebels of less note. Doctor Blackburn was there known and represented himself as an agent of the so-called Confederate Government, just as Jacob Thompson was angent.

But it is in the deposition of G. J. Hyams that the most direct proof of Clay's cognizance and approval of the operation of Blackburn is