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he has acquired possession by preceding piracy. This seems equivalent to a principle that a second act of piracy protects the pirate from punishment for the first. However conformable this maxim may be to the legal standard of morality, the Supreme Court did not so decide in the case of the Josefa Segunda. They decided, that the capture of a Spanish vessel and negroes by a privateer, with a commission from Arismendi, under the Republic of Venezuela, was not piracy; and that the Josefa Segunda, a Spanish vessel, and her cargo of negroes, captured by authority of such a commission, were forfeited by a subsequent attempt of the captors to smuggle them into the United States, though taken from the Spanish owners only by the Venezuelan commission from Arismendi. Now the Columbia had entered Baltimore, and there enlisted her crew under those identical colors of Venezuela, and, no doubt, with a commission from the same Arismendi. When metamorphosed into the Arraganta, she took the Antelope and her negroes, by a commission from Artigas, quite as efficient to legitimate a prize as that of Arismendi; and John Smith, when captured with the Antelope and her negroes, by Captain Jackson, produced this commission from Artigas as his warrant for his possession of the vessel and the slaves. As between the Arraganta and the Antelope, therefore, the capture of the latter by a commission from Artigas was no piratical but belligerent, it did divest the Spanish owners of the property and vest it in the captors, at least sufficiently to make it forfeitable by their subsequent attempt to smuggle it into the United States; and the decision of the Supreme Court, in the case of the Josefa Segunda, instead of sustaining that of the District Judge, in the case of the Antelope, is an authority point blank against it.

For the allotment of 142 of the negroes to the Portuguese Vice Consul, there was not even the apology of a Portuguese claimant, other than the Vice Consul himself, to the property. There was not a shadow of evidence that they were the property of Portuguese subjects, and none were ever found to claim them. He took the testimony of the capturing crew, that some of them were taken from vessels under Portuguese colors; and as he had no evidence that Portugal had then prohibited the slave trade, he took it for granted that the negros were all slaves, and, as such, he decreed that they should be delivered to the Vice Consul. 

With regard to the question, whether Slavery was or was not



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contrary to the law of nations, his decision was such as might be expected from a judge, himself a holder of slaves, in a land where slavery has the sanction of  law. The question, as I have endeavored to show, did not belong to the case, "But it is contended," (says the District judge) "on the authority of some recent decisions in the British Admiralty Court, that Africans are to me considered free, until it is shown that they are slaves, and that the burden of proof is with those who set up a claim to them. This doctrine may be correct in England, since there negroes have always been held to be free, except in cases where they have voluntarily entered into engagements binding them to service. And yet, inconsistent and contradictory as it may be, slavery has been recognized in all the British American colonies.

"But it does not appear to me that I can admit the proposition in the form and manner in which it is here presented. The period is not very remote when all the Governments of Europe, and the several States of the United States when they were British colonies, and many of them after they became independent, recognized slavery. But a few years have elapsed since the Government of the United States permitted her citizens to engage in the African trade. Under such a state of things, it appears to me that this Court is bound to consider the unfortunate Africans, when found in the possession of the subjects or  citizens of any Government which has heretofore permitted this traffic as slaves, until the contrary be shown. That this trade, however inhuman it may be, and however obnoxious it is to every benevolent feeling, must now be considered legal, notwithstanding its injustice, until it is shown to have been prohibited by that Government whose subjects claim the right of engaging in it.

"When it shall have been ascertained that the different Governments of the civilized world have consented to abolish the trade or after it shall have been ascertained that any particular State or Government has determined to abolish it, this Court would consider the claims set up in favor of Africans found in the situation of those before the Court, in a different point of view. In the one case they would, I think, uniformly be considered free, until the contrary was shown; in the other case, they would be so considered when they were found in the possession of the subjects or citizens of that Government which had  determined to abolish the trade. 
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