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it may be, "will affect the course which the Government of the United States may think it fit ultimately to adopt." What other construction can possibly from the words there are facts in the case which prove that this was what was intended. The Secretary proceeds with his explanations and apologies.

"The undersigned indulges the hope that, upon a review of the circumstances of the case, and the questions it involves, the Chevalier d'Argaiz will agree with him in thinking that the delay which has already occurred is not more than commensurate with the importance of those questions; that such delay is not uncommon in the proceedings and deliberations of governments desirous of taking equal justice as the guide of their actions; and that the caution which it has been found necessary to observe in the instance under consideration, is yet far from having occasioned such procrastination as it has been the lot of the United States frequently to encounter in their intercourse with Government of Spain."

"With regard to the imprisonment of Don Jose Ruiz, it is again the misfortune of this Government to have been entirely misapprehended by the Chevalier d'Argaiz into a polemical discussion with the Attorney of the United States for the district of New York, than to supply Don Jose Ruiz, gratis, with counsel in the suit in which he had been made a party. The offer made to that person of the advice and assistance of the District Attorney, was a favor- an entirely gratuitous one- since it was not the province of the United States to interfere in a private litigation between subjects of a foreign state, for which Mr. Ruiz is indebted to the desire of this government to treat with due respect the application made in his behalf in the name of her Catholic Majesty, and not to any right he ever had to be protected against alledged demands of individuals against him or his property."

Here, then, it is avowed that the Executive government of this nation had interposed in a suit between two parties, by extending a favor entirely gratuitous to one of the parties, who, it is at the same time admitted, had no claim whatever to this gratuitous aid. And then comes the exhibition which I have already read, of 



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the national sympathy, in which all the authorities of the country are alledged [[alleged]] to have participated, and the assumption, under which all the proceedings have been carried on, that there was but one party aggrieved in the case, and that party was the Spanish slave-traders.

On the 25th of December the Chevalier d'Argaiz addressed a long letter to the Secretary of State, in which he acknowledges the receipt of the last letter, to which "it would be superfluous"- the word is ocioso, idle- to reply, inasmuch as the Secretary of State does not seem to have considered it requisite in the present situation of the affair, to combat the arguments adduced by the undersigned. The delicacy of the undersigned does not, however, allow him to pass over (desoir) certain insinuations (remarks) contained in the said note; and it will, be difficult for him to avoid adducing some new argument in support of his demands."

The Secretary had never met these claims and arguments, as it was his duty to do, and the Spanish minister is continually reminding him that he does not answer his arguments. He then refers him to his own course, and says, "The undersigned would not have troubles the Government of the Union with his urgent demand, if the two Spaniards (who, as the Secretary of State, in his note of the 12th, says, 'were found in this distressing and perilous situation by officers of the United States, who, moved by sympathetic feelings, which subsequently became national,') had not been the victims of an intrigue, as accurately shown by Mr. Forsyth, in the conference which he had with the undersigned on the 21st of October last."

He here refers to a private conference in which the Secretary of State had accurately shown that the two Spaniards in New York were the "victims of an intrigue." The Secretary of State of the United States, then, had confidently and officially informed the Spanish minister that the two Spaniards, in being arrested at the suit of these Africans, were the "victims of an intrigue." What the Secretary meant by "victims of an intrigue," is not for me to say. These Spaniard had been sued in the courts of the state of New York by some of my clients, for alleged wrongs done to them on the high seas--for cruelty, in fact, so dreadful, that many of their number had actually perished under the treatment. These suits were commenced by lawyers of New