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The 6th Article of the Spanish Treaty has received a judicial construction in the case of the Santissima Trinidad, (7 Wheat. 284,) where it was decided that the obligation assumed is simply that of protecting belligerent vessels from capture within our jurisdiction.   It can have no application therefore to a case like the present.

The 9th Article of the treaty provides "that all ships and merchandise of what nature soever, which shall be rescued out of the hands of pirates or robbers, on the high seas, shall be brought into some port of either state, and shall be delivered to the custody of the officers of that port, in order to be taken care of, and restored entire to the true proprietors, as soon as due and sufficient proof shall be made concerning the property thereof."

To render this clause of the treaty applicable to the case under consideration, it must be assumed that under the term "merchandise" the contracting parties intended to include slaves; and that slaves, themselves the recent victims of piracy, who, by a successful revolt, have achieved their deliverance from slavery, on the high seas, and have availed themselves of the means of escape of which they have thus acquired the possession, are to be deemed "pirates and robbers" "from whose hands" such "merchandise has been rescued."

It is believed that such a construction of the words of the treaty is not in accordance with the rules of interpretation which ought to govern our courts; and that when there is no special reference to human beings as property,——who are not acknowledged as such by the law or comity of nations generally, but only by the municipal laws of the particular nations which tolerate slavery, it cannot be presumed that the contracting parties intended to include them under the general term "merchandise."  As has already been remarked, it may well be doubted whether such a stipulation would be within the treaty making power of the United States.  It is to be remembered that the Government of the United States is based on the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence by the Congress of 1776; "that all men are created equal;——that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,——that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that to secure these rights governments are instituted."

The Convention which formed the Federal Constitution, though they recognized slavery as existing in regard to persons held to labor by the laws of the States which tolerated it, were careful to exclude from that instrument every expression that might be construed into an admission