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merchandise, but as men-as infant females, with flesh, and blood, and nerves, and sinews, to be tortured, and with lives to be forfeited and consumed by fire, to appease the public vengeance of the lawless slave-traders in Cuba?

Mr. Forsyth by a most unaccountable oversight of this distinction between persons and things, misrepresents this demand Mr. Calderon.

He instructs the District Attorney, Mr. Holabird, (11th Sept. 1839, Doc. p. 39, 40) that the Spanish minister had addressed a communication to the Department of state claiming the vessel, cargo, and Blacks on board, as Spanish property, and demanding its immediate release.

The District Attorney, on the 19th of September, files, accordingly, his libels, (record, p. 13) stating the demand of the Spanish minister, not as it had really been made, but according to the statement of it in his instructions from the Department of State; and he prays the Court that, if they claim of the Spanish minister is well founded and conformable to treaty, the Court should make such order for the disposal of the said vessel, cargo, and slaves, as may best enable the United States, in all respects, to comply with their treaty stipulations, and preserve the public faith inviolate.

But if it should be made to appear that the persons aforesaid, described as slaves, are negroes and persons of color, who have been transported from Africa in violation of the laws of the United States, and brought into the United States contrary to the same laws, he claims that, in such case, the Court shall make no further order as may enable the United States, if deemed expedient, to remove such persons to the coast of Africa, to be delivered there to such agent or agents as may be authorized to receive and provide for them, pursuant to the laws of the United States; or to make such other order as to the court should seem fit, right, and proper in the premises.

Here were three alternatives prayed for-1st. That the vessel, cargo, and blacks, assumed to be slaves, should be so disposed of as to enable the United States to comply with their treaty stipulations, and preserve the public faith inviolate. It was stated that this demand was made at the instance of the Spanish minister but that was true only of the vessel and cargo, but not of the persons. Of them, he had demanded, by necessary implication, that

they should not be restored to their pretended owners, but kept in close custody, and, in defiance of all judicial authority, conveyed to Havana Governmentally, that is, by the arbitrary mandate of the President of the United States, to satisfy public vengeance. The Court could not have complied with this alternative of restoring the negroes, as property, to their owners, but by denying and defying the real demand of the Spanish minister, that they should be sent to Cuba as criminals.

The second alternative was, that the Court should enable the United States to send the negroes home to Africa, if deemed expedient; and to this decree of the Court said, soit fait comme il est desiré-be it as the District Attorney desires. Let the said Africans, in custody of the Marshal of the District of Connecticut, to be by him transported to Africa, in pursuance of the law of Congress passed March 3, 1829, entitled "An act in addition to the acts prohibiting the slave-trade."

Yet, from this sentence, claimed by the District Attorney. the representatives of the Executive administration before the court, it is he himself that appeals. Should they reverse the decision of the District and Circuit Courts, they would indeed determine that the forty persons should not be delivered to the President of the United States, to be sent home to Africa;-but what shall the Court decree to be done with them? Not, surely, that they should be delivered up to their pretended owners, for against that the Spanish minister solemnly protests! He demands not even that they should be delivered up to himself! He demands that it should be declared, that no tribunal in the United States has the right even to institute proceedings against them. Be declared-by whom? He demands of the Executive Administration-(Will the Court please to consider what the purport of this demand is?)--that the President of the United States should issue a proclamation, that no tribunal of the United States has the right to institute proceedings against the subjects of Spain for crimes committed on board a Spanish vessel, and in the waters of the Spanish territory.

When this demand was made, the Africans of the Amistad were in the custody of a judicial tribunal of the United States, upon
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