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April, 1818, prohibiting American citizens from engaging in the African slave-trade. 

At the same Court, Charles Mulvey, vice-consul of Spain, and Francis Sorell, vice-consul of Portugal, at Savannah, filed each a libel for restitution, the former of 150, the latter of 130 African negroes, composing the cargo of the Antelope. To these two libels Richard Habersham, district attorney of the United States, interposed in their name a claim to the freedom of all the negroes, on the ground that some American citizen was interested or engaged in their transportation from Africa. 

The Spanish vice-consul claimed the vessel and all the negroes in behalf of the original fitters out of the Antelope, for the slave-trading voyage, at the Havana. 

And Captain Jackson claimed salvage for all the negroes who might be adjudged to the Spanish and Portuguese vice-consuls; and twenty-five dollars a head for all those who might be declared free, according to the act of Congress. 

The judge of the District Court, after rejecting the claim of John Smith, on the ground of the illegality of the fitting out of the Columbia, or Arraganta, at Baltimore, and thereby settling the principle, that no capture made by that vessel could be legal, seems to have forgotten, or overlooked, the violation by the same John Smith of the laws of the United States for the suppression of the slave-trade; at least, so far as concerned all the negroes on board the Antelope, excepting only a small remnant of twenty-five, which had been taken from the American slave-trader, the Exchange, from Bristol, Rhode Island. John Smith had made no attempt to smuggle these into the United States separate from the rest. His attempt had been to smuggle them all in. Why, then, should those taken from taken from the American vessel alone be declared free, and those taken from the Spaniards and Portuguese doomed to perpetual slavery?

The judge hunted up sundry old decisions in the Supreme Court of the United States, and, finally, the case of the Josafa et Segunda, 5 Wheaton, 338, for a principle "that, upon a piratical or illegal capture, the property of the original owners cannot be forfeited for the misconduct of the captors in violating the municipal laws of the country where the vessel seized them is carried." The application of which principle to the rights of the respective parties in the case of the Antelope was, that the property of the 



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Spanish owners of the Antelope could not be forfeited by the misconduct of John Smith in capturing it, in violation of the laws of the United States, by virtue of a commission from Artigas. Thus far the principle was correctly applied; but to that other misconduct of John Smith, the attempt to smuggle these negroes into the United States, by which they became forfeited, and made free by the law, whoever might have been their owner; to that misconduct, the precedent of the Josafa et Segunda had no application whatever, and it was altogether overlooked in the decision of the district judge, although he decreed freedom to the chance chosen survivors of the twenty-five negroes of the very same cargo, taken from the American vessel, though forfeited and liberated by the very same attempt of John Smith to smuggle them into the United States for sale. It was perfectly immaterial to the question of forfeiture and liberation to whom all or any of the negroes had originally belonged. It was the attempt to smuggle them which induced their forfeiture by the rigor, and their consequent liberation by the beneficence, of the law. 

But having once introduced this entirely extraneous question, to whom the negroes on board the Antelope, when captured by Captain Jackson, had originally belonged, the District Judge proceeded, upon such evidence as he deemed sufficient, to decide, that those captured in her by the Arraganta, were the property of Spaniards, and without one title of evidence, to infer, that all the negroes taken from vessels under Portuguese colors, had been the property of Portuguese subjects, unknown; and upon these conclusions and assumptions, to adjudge all the negroes, save the scanty surviving remnant of twenty-five taken from the Exchange of Rhode Island, to the Spanish and Portuguese Vice Consuls. 

At this distance of time, who can read such an adjudication of an American judge, without amazement. 

The claim of C. Mulvey [Spanish Vice Consul] was therefore sustained to the Antelope, and to as many of the negroes, as should appear to be remaining of those found on board of her at the time of her capture by the Arraganta. 

The libel of F. Sorrell, the Portuguese Vice Consul, was sustained against so many of the slaves as should appear to remain of those taken by the Arraganta from Portuguese vessels. 

And it was further ordered with assent of parties, (that is, of these two parties the Spanish and Portuguese Vice Consuls, and