A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN WILBRAHAM, NOVEMBER 17, 1805, OCCASIONED BY THE MURDER OF MARCUS LYON. BY EZRA WITTER, A.M. PASTOR OF THE NORTH CHURCH IN SAID TOWN

Springfield, Mas.: M. Brewer - Printer, 1805. 16pp, disbound with light to moderate foxing. Good+.

"Lyon, a young man traveling home, was beaten to death by highway robbers and his body weighted down with a large stone in the Chicopee River" [McDade 258].
Two men, Irish immigrants Daley and Halligan, were arrested. The evidence of guilt was underwhelming. Their convictions may well have been based on ethnic prejudices. Their appointed counsel, Francis Blake, who offered no witnesses on their behalf, had urged the jury not to give in to prevailing ethnic prejudice. In 1984 Governor Dukakis officially proclaimed Daley and Halligan innocent, and victims of anti-Irish bias.
Reverend Witter's Discourse reflects this contemporary animus. Describing in detail the murder of young Lyon "by two ruffian footpads," he blames "the policy of permitting so many idle vagrants to traverse the country ... We see the evil attending a continual influx of vicious and polluted foreigners into this country. Many of the outrages we suffer, proceed from this source. - Who break open our houses, in the unsuspecting hours of sleep? -- Who set fire to our large cities and towns for the sake of plunder? and Who rob and commit murder on our highways? ... A great portion of the crimes abovementioned, together with many others which might be named, are committed by foreigners. And that atrocious deed which has, so recently, congealed all our blood with horror, in this place, is supposed to have been perpetrated by foreigners. And by whom are our state-prisons crowded with inhabitants? Look at the annual reports of the overseers of these prisons, and you will find them to be occupied, principally, by foreigners."
AI 9756 [5]. Not in McDade. Sabin 104962.