CHRO NT C LE, 
against her had been brought before 
a magistrate, she refusing to confess, 
had been ordered to be tortured. 
2. That governor Picton, who 
condemned her to this torture, did 
not proceed from any motives of 
malice, but from a conviction that 
the right of torture was sanctioned 
by the laws of Trinidad ; and that 
he was rooted in this opinion, by a 
reference to the Jegal written autho- 
rities in that island. 
3. That whatever his conduct 
might be, it was certainly neither 
personal malice, nor disposition to 
tyranny, but resulted, if it should 
prove to be wrong, from a misap- 
prehension of the laws of Trinidad. 
A. That one of the principal wit- 
nesses in this trial, M. Vargas, had 
brought forward a book, entitled 
Recapitacion des Leys de los Indes, 
expressly compiled for the Spanish 
colonies, which did not authorize 
torture.—The defendant had no op- 
portunity of ever seeing that book, 
but it had been purchased by the 
British institution, at the sale of the 
marguis of Lansdowne’s library, 
subsequent to his trial; and having 
consulted it, it appeared that where 
that code was silent upon some cri- 
minal cases, recourse was always to 
be had to the laws of Old Spain, and | 
these laws, of course, sanctioned the 
wifliction of torture. 
The court, after some considera- 
tion, granted the rule to shew cause 
for a new trial. 
MAY. 
2d. A circumstance took place at 
the house of a gentleman of fortune 
in the neighbourhood of Chelsea, 
which for a while caused considera« 
Vou. XLVI. 
40} 
ble uneasiness in the family. An 
elderly woman, of shabby appear. 
ance, knocked at the door of the 
house in question, and requested to 
have an interview with the lady of 
the house on an affair of considera- 
ble importance. She was refused 
admittance by the servant, when she 
insisted on her right of access to the 
house, being nearly related to the 
family by marriage. The gentleman 
was not at home, and the intruder 
was shewn into a back room, where 
she had an interview with one of 
the daughters.—She represented her- 
self as being the wife of her father, 
to whom she had been united in 
wedlock, “as long since as 1772. 
This assertion caused great uneasi- 
ness in the family, as the intruder 
mentioned the place where the gen- 
tleman of the house resided, and 
with hearty tears she insisted on pro- 
tection under the roof. She was 
suffered to remain in the house until 
the return of the alledged husband, 
whom she seized with apparent an- 
guish and fondness. He, however, 
knew nothing of her, and her sub. 
sequent conduét was such as to re- 
quire her detention. Her name, it 
appears, is King. 
The abuses committed in the West 
Indies, are said to exceed every thing 
that was ever stated in romance. 
The commissioners are stated to have 
discovered that forged bills and re- 
ceipts, for articles never purchased, 
and bills drawn on government 
indorsed under forged and fictitious 
names, were common and notorious. 
They found a most base collusion 
between the officers of government, 
and the merchants and contractors, 
by which the latter were allowed to 
charge stores at a much higher rate 
than they might have been ebtained 
d for 
