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108 and that, "if the case rested here there would be no difficulty in adjudging the vessel forfeited, for taking these Africans on board at sea, with intent to dispose of them as slaves. But this, although perhaps literally within the provisions of the statute, is obviously not within the intent and meaning." Why perhaps, literally within the provisions of the statute? No reader of the English language can read the provisions of the statute and entertain a doubt that they extend literally to the case-why not within its intent and meaning? Never was an obiter dictum of a judge more peremptory or more gratuitous! There is not a word, not a letter in the statute to authorize the intention of shielding from forfeiture a slave trading smuggler, because the captain was not her owner. The forfeiture attaches to the action, the violation of the laws against the slave trade, and to the instrument used for that violation, without inquiring to whom that instrument belongs. The mischief to be remedied by the law, was the introduction of African slaves into the United States.-The vessel is the instrument with which the violation of the law was effected, and by which the forfeiture was incurred. Neither justice nor policy could require an exemption from the forfeiture, because the captain in possession of the vessel and employing her in violation of the law, was not her lawful owner. The judge says, there are reiterated decisions of the American courts, that a capture made under an illegal American outfit is not belligerent, but void, and producing no change of right ; and from this it follows, that Smith had no interest on which the forfeiture inflicted by law for this offence could attach. The judge names no one of these reiterated decisions, and we have seen that the only one specifically cited by the District judge, in support of the same principle, was a clear authority against it. There were no doubt decisions that captures of friendly foreign vessels, by American privateers illegally fitted out in our ports, and bearing South American commissions, did not so divest the property, but that it might be restored by our courts, in controversy between the captors and the original owners-but that the laws of the United States, prescribing penalties of forfeiture for crimes, should be violated with impunity, because the slave smuggler had stolen the instrument with which he committed the crime! No! I trust the Antelope is, and will for ever remain, the solitary case in which such a principle can claim the sanction of the courts of the United States! 109 The wild and glaring inconsistency not only between the opinions and decrees of the District and Circuit Courts of the United States, in the case of the Antelope, but between the opinions and decrees of each of those Courts and itself discloses in crystal transparency an internal conflict of mind between the duty of suppressing the African slave trade, and the desire to maintain and fortify the institution of slavery, little auspicious to the composure of justice or to the impartial exercise of the judicial faculty. Both the Judges profess a sentimental abhorrence of the trade. The Circuit Judge discusses at great length the question whether the slave trade is contrary to the Law of Nations. He admits that the British Court of Admiralty have of latter years asserted a doctrine of this nature; but after commenting sarcastically upon the motive of the British Judges and Government, and descanting upon mental dependence, and interference with the family concerns of others, in which no nation has a right to volunteer, he quotes a passage from the decision of the British Court in the case of the Amédée [Acton, 240,] and says, "I must until better advised assume an opposite language." "I feel," says he, "no inclination to justify or even palliate the trade. I thank God I have lived to see its death-blow. But it was from religion or policy, not from national humanity, that the blow was received. On the contrary, British policy struggled against the effort to abolish it, and all the efforts of the Quakers, the Methodists and Mr. Wilberforce proved abortive until the horrors acted in St. Domingo opened the eyes of Government to consequences that it became political to guard against. From that time, philanthropy like the pent up vapor, began freely to diffuse itself, and extended its spread even to the British Court of Admiralty." "That slavery, (says again the Judge of the Circuit Court,) is a national evil no one will deny except him [he] who would maintain that national wealth is the supreme national good. But whatever it be, it was entailed upon us by our ancestors, and actually provided for in the constitution first received from the Lords Proprietors under which the southern colonies were planted. During the Royal government it was fostered as the means of improving the colonies, and affording a lucrative trade to the mother country, and however revolting to humanity, may be the