Orleans County Monitor

A HARSH FATE.—A man in the State Prison sent word to a Justice of the Peace at Trenton, N. J., in order to make a statement under oath that he was the cause of a fellow-prisoner being confined in jail, on a sentence of twenty-seven years, for breaking and entering, an offense of which the man is entirely innocent. These people are Germans, and, as far as their statements are concerned, it appears that this man, through the officers, was persuaded to plead guilty, without knowing the effect of any such plea, but under the general idea and assurance that it would be much better for him. The stunning sentence of twenty seven years, ten years for each of the indictments, and seven on a third, on a man who had committed no offence, but was at work in another man's shop at the time the burglary was committed, and who was inveigled into the affair because, as it appears, he had purchased from the real thief, who now makes the disclosure, some articles said to have been stolen—such a sentence, under the circumstances, must have fallen like a death-knell on the German when he came to understand it.