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7, 8,) that his demand on the Executive for the surrender of the Africans as criminals, was made on the 6th of September, 1839, several days anterior to the filing of the libels of Ruiz and Montez in the District Court against them as property. Of course their libels and claims could not have been included in an claim of the Spanish minister, on which the Court was called to decide. Indeed the Spanish minister would have had no right to appear in the Court of Admiralty as the representative of Spanish claimants of property, who were personally in Court pursuing their claims for themselves. See 1 Mason, 14; 10 Wheat. 66. And so far was he from actually appearing, or desiring to appear as a suitor in the Court, that he has continued to the present time to protest against the exercise of jurisdiction by any of the tribunals of the United States over the subject matter in controversy. Cong. Doc. 185, p. 21. H. R. 1840, and Sen. Doc. 179, 1841 p. 6. He has neither taken, himself, an appeal from the decree of the Court, nor has he authorized an appeal from the decree of the Court below is the appeal of the United States in the following words: "And after the said decree is pronounced the said United States, claiming as aforesaid in pursuance of a demand made upon them by the minister of her Catholic Majesty the Queen of Spain, to the United States, move an appeal, &c."

The Counsel for the Africans move the Court to dismiss this appeal, on the ground that the Executive Government of the United States had no right to become a party to the proceedings against them as property, in the District Court, or to appeal from its decree.

1st. It was an unauthorized interference of the Executive with the appropriate duties of the Judiciary.

By the constitution of the United States the sovereignty, originally in the people, was confided by them, so far as was deemed necessary for the purposes of a National Government, to three separate departments; each in the exercise of its legitimate powers, sovereign and independent of the other. And, it was long since remarked by an eminent jurist, that when either branch of the government usurps that part of the sovereignty which the constitution assigns to the other branch, liberty ends, and tyranny begins. The constitution designates the portion if sovereignty to be exercised by the judicial department, and among