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divination? We can only do the best in our power. The lot must decide their fate, and the Almighty will direct the hand that acts in the selection. But I cannot consent to reduce this number from twenty-five to nine, [to seven,] for this depends upon testimony that was interested to deceive, since in those twenty-five, Smith could have no hope to sustain his claims though he might succeed as to the residue. The reduction of the number must therefore be averaged upon a scale with the rest, and as they consisted of twenty-three men and two boys, the lot must select them accordingly from the men and boys. 

"Some doubts have been stated as to the national character of the vessel and as to the Spanish and Portuguese interest in the slaves. On the vessel I entertain no doubt. She was captured as Spanish, and the evidence is sufficient to prove the Spanish interest in her --and the slaves taken on board of her, must necessarily follow her fate. But I am induced to think that the evidence preponderates to prove that there were but ninety-three, and, that number must also be reduced by the general scale of loss. Concerning the residue, the evidence appears so conclusive, that reluctant as I feel to keep the case open I cannot adjudge them to the Portuguese Consul, without further proof."

In examining the claim of Capt. Jackson to salvage, the judge becomes exceedingly doubtful whether it is a case for salvage at all, and enters a caveat against his own decree for allowing it. He thinks if a Venezuelan agent had interposed a claim to the property as prize of war, he should have been still more puzzled how to shape his decree than he was. He does not appear to be at all aware that if a Venezuela agent could have claimed the property as a prize of war there could have been no Spanish claimant to whom it could have been restored. The decree of restoration to Spanish owners was therefore ipse facto equivalent to a decree for salvage, the quantum of which alone remained for consideration. His caveat against his allowance for salvage, was therefore a caveat against his whole decree, and thus far was an approach to the definition of justice--Jus suum cuique.
 
The decrees of the Circuit Court (for there were two) like the states of mind disclosed by these opinions of the judge, were a chaos of confusion. By the first, delivered on the 11th of May, 1823, the Decree of the District Court, so far as related to the vessel, the Antelope, was affirmed, and so far as related to the



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slaves imported in her reversed and annulled. The District Court had decreed the restoration of the Antelope to the Spanish claimants, on the ground that she had not been forfeited to the United States, for the violation of the laws for the suppression of the slave trade. She had not been forfeited, though taken by Captain Jackson in the act of smuggling into the United States for sale near three hundred Africans, and though the law literally declares all Africans thus imported free, and the vessel in which they are imported forfeited to the United States. From this forfeiture the Decree of the District Court, exempted the Antelope, because before the commission of this smuggling piracy she had been taken by another act of piracy, from certain virtuous Spanish slave traders, whose property in her, and consequently in the slaves with which she was laden, was too sacred to be divested wither by piratical capture or by the laws of the United States against the importation of slaves, or against the African slave trade. With this part of the Decree of the District Court, the judge of the Circuit Court concurs. The laws of the United States for the suppression of the execrable slave trade, and against the importation of African slaves are baffled, defeated, prostrated, nullified--three hundred wretched victims of that trade, are deprived of the benefit of that just and generous provision that the very act of importing them shall operate in their favor as an act of emancipation. They are re-consigned to hopeless and perpetual slavery, from mere reverence for the property of Spanish slave traders! Well might such a decision divide the opinions of he judges of the Supreme tribunal when it came up to them for adjudication. Well might Chief Justice Marshall declare that upon this point no principle was settled, and well may every friend of human liberty, and every sincere wisher for the suppression of that detested traffic indignantly deny that the case of the Antelope can ever be cited as authority for any such principle of law. 

But as the Circuit Court, reversed and annulled every part of the decree of the District Court for the disposal and distribution of the slaves, so the final decree of the Supreme Court passed the same sweeping sentence of reversal, upon all the dispositions of the Circuit Court, not excepting that reliance upon an Almighty hand to direct that designation by lot, which was to give to one man what was the right of another, and to emancipate a slave as an equivalent for enslaving a freeman. 
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pretty positive this one is done - the initial transcriber forgot to click mark for review