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"If it could be made to appear to this court that, at the time these Africans were taken from the possession of the Spanish and Portuguese claimants, Spain and Portugal had agreed to prohibit their subjects from engaging in the trade, this Court, I think would be bound to restore to these people their liberty.

"It is true this Court will not enforce the municipal laws of another country, by punishing the subjects of that country for the infraction of them; but this Court would feel bound to respect the rights of Africans no less than it would respect the rights of any other class of persons. Spain, however, had not, at the time I am speaking of, abolished the trade to Africa, although she had placed it under certain restrictions. Can it be permitted to this Court to examine the commercial regulation or the conventional engagement of Spain?"

It is unnecessary further to repeat verbatim et literatim this argument of the District judge to sustain his decree. Every word and letter of it teems with anxiety to sustain the institution of Slavery, and to prostrate instead of enforcing the laws of the United States for the suppression of the slave trade. What he calls certain restrictions placed on the trade by Spain, was the total prohibition of it north of the equator, even then stipulated by Spain in a treaty with Great Britain, and enacted accordingly by her law. But what of that? The judge admits that the trade is inhuman, that it is obnoxious to every benevolent feeling, but he is bound to consider it legal, notwithstanding its injustice, because many years before it had been practised by Great Britain, and not many years before by the United States themselves." Is this the reasoning for the Court of Justice? When all the civilized nations of the earth shall have abolished the African slave trade, the judge thinks that captured Africans would be considered free, unless proved to be slaves: and if Spain and Portugal should abolish the slaves trade, he thinks the burden of proof that negroes captured in their vessels were slaves, would rest upon their captors. In that case, the Court would respect the rights of Africans as much as those of any other class of persons; but until then, how could the Court be permitted to examine into treaty stipulations of Spain, or into any restriction imposed by Spain upon the traffic of her subjects in slaves?

Such was the reasoning of a slave-holding judge upon slavery and the slave trade, and by such reasoning did he, out of two hun- 


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dred and twelve Africans, forfeit to the United States, to receive from them the blessing of freedom, and restoration to their native country, reduce the number who should enjoy that privilege to seven individuals, consigning all the rest to perpetual, hopeless Spanish and Portuguese slavery!- Seven freemen to two hundred and five slaves!

The appeal from these decrees to the Circuit Court of the United States came up before Judge William Johnson, in May, 1821. His opinions differed toto Coelo from those of the District judge. He increased the number of the American vessels, from seven to sixteen: he rejected the incredible testimony of the pirate, John Smith, that while the mortality of the whole cargo of negroes had averaged not more than one in three, the number of deaths among those taken from the American vessel and amounted to two-thirds of the whole. He reversed the decree of the District judge, which had allotted one hundred and forty-two negroes to the Portuguese Vice Consul; and reserved his claim for further proof, which never was produced. He reduced the allowance of salvage to Captain Jackson, and the crew of the revenue cutter, to fifty dollars a head for the negroes to be delivered to the Spanish Vice Consul, and expressed a strong doubt whether it was a case for salvage at all. He intimated, very significantly, an opinion, that if a claim had been interposed by an agent of Venezuela, or of the Oriental Republic, the capture of the Antelope, by Captain Jackson, must have been pronounced illegal-a mere marine trespass-punishable in damages rather than rewardable for salvage; and yet he allowed him a salvage of fifty dollars a head for the negroes surrendered to the Spanish Vice Consul. He concurred, however in the most exceptionable of all the opinions of the District judge; namely, that because John Smith had no forfeitable interest in the Antelope and in the negroes, originally belonging to Spanish owners, but then in his possession, and which he was when captured, in the act of smuggling into the United States; therefore they were not forfeited at all, and must be delivered up to the Spanish Vice Consul. The judge of the Circuit Court, sitting alone, after stating the circumstances of the capture by Captain Jackson, and the claims of the respective parties, promptly and without hesitation pronounces, that John Smith was taken in the act of violating the laws of the United States for the suppression of the slave trade;