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had been selected by the marshal, and recognized by a man named Grondona, who had been second officer on board the Antelope when the slaves were purchased and shipped in Africa. Grondona had since disappeared, and was said to be dead ; but there were witnesses in Court who had been present at the examination when Grondona recognized thirty-four of the negroes and they him, by speaking together, and by signs, though the witnesses knew nothing of the language in which they spoke. Other witnesses testified to his having recognized five more. The Africans had no notice that their fate, as freemen or slaves, was to depend on this recognition. They had no one to defend them, and protest for them, against the manner of disposing of their freedom. The examination was in one court, but the only evidence furnished was testimony to individuals whom Grondona had recognized and who had recognized him. Hearsay evidence of one whose language the witnesses did not understand!
Yet the Supreme Court thought this evidence sufficient, under the very peculiar circumstances of this case, reasonably to satisfy the mind of the identity of thirty-nine of the Africans, as belonging to the Spanish claimants, and affirmed the decree of the Circuit Court for their delivery up to the Spanish Vice Consul. 
Under the very peculiar circumstances of the case, in order to enslave 39 human beings, otherwise entitled to freedom, evidence was deemed sufficient, which, upon an ordinary question of property, of five dollars value, between man and man, would have been rejected as inadmissible. 
The very peculiar circumstances of the case are quite as strongly marked, in the opinion of the judge of the Circuit Court, in December, 1826, as they had been in his preceding opinion, delivered in 1821. In apologizing for the enormous amount of the marshal's bill, allowed by the court, which he is aware must expose the court, and the administration of justice in the country, to certain imputations, he says, "What could the court do? The United States regard the subjects of this suit as men and not things. They could not be sold, and the money lodged in the registry. They were then prisoners, and necessarily to be kept and treated as such." Had he judge allowed his reason to advance one step further, he would have seen, that precisely because they were men and not things, precisely because they could not be sold, precisely because they must be kept and treated, if at all, as prison-

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ers they could not be restored entire as merchandize, nor, therefore, come within the purview of the 9th article of our treaty with Spain. "The next question," says the judge of the Circuit Court, "is by whom these costs are to be paid? That the maintenance of the Africans was a legal charge on the United States, in the first instance, is perfectly clear. By the act of February 28, 1799, in forcing them into the hands of the marshal, the United States became bound for their subsistence."
The judge of the Circuit Court further affirms, that the Supreme Court, by its decree of 1825, and explanatory decree of 1826, established seven principles; the first of which, in his enumeration, is--"That the law of nations recognized both slavery and the slave trade."
But Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering the opinion and pronouncing the decree of the Supreme Court in 1825, declared that, on the question of the restitution to the Spanish claimant, which depended entirely upon the recognition of the slave trade by the law of nations, "the Court is divided on it, and consequently, NO PRINCIPLE IS SETTLED."
The judge of the Circuit Court was, therefore, in manifest error when he said that the Supreme Court had, by the decrees of 1825 and 1826, established the principle, that the law of nations recognized both slavery and the slave-trade. And this mistake discloses the source of that great perplexity, which troubles him, to find a consistency between the principle which he erroneously supposes them to have established, and their decree for carrying it into execution. It is not our business to inquire into the reasons of that Court. "We must give effect to it according to what we understand to be its meaning. And, upon collating and combining their decree of 1825 with the explanatory decree of 1826, the two will be found to amount to this--that the rights of the Spaniards shall be recognized; but, in reducing that right to possession, they shall be held to have established a claim originally to ninety-three, which number shall be reduced by the average of deaths; and to the number so ascertained, they shall be held to produce proof of individual identity. But all the cargo, with the exception of those to be thus identified, shall be delivered over to the United States. This will be doing what that Court certainly in-