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slavery, stand on equal ground.  And in a case like this, where it is admitted that the Africans were recently imported, and consequently never domiciled in Cuba, and owe no allegiance to its laws, their rights are to be determined by that law which is of universal obligation,--the law of Nature. 
If, indeed, the vessel in which they sailed had been driven upon our coast by stress of weather or other unavoidable cause, and they had arrived here in the actual possession of their alleged owners, and had been slaves by the law of the country from which they sailed, and where they were domiciled, it would have been a very different question, whether the Courts of the United States could interfere to liberate them, as was done at Bermuda by the Colonial tribunal in the case of the Enterprize.
But in this case there has been no possession of these Africans by their claimants within our jurisdiction, of which they have been deprived, by the act of our Government or its officers; and neither by the law of comity, or by force of the Treaty, are the officers or Courts of the United States required, or by the principles of our Government permitted to become actors in reducing them to slavery.

These preliminary questions have been made on account of the important principles involved in them, and not from any unwillingness to meet the question between the Africans and their claimants upon the facts in evidence, and on those alone, to vindicate their claims to freedom.
Suppose then, the case to be properly here:--and that Ruiz and Montez, unprejudiced by the decree of the Court below, were at liberty to take issue with the Africans upon their answer, and to call upon this court to determine the question of liberty or property, how stands the case on the evidence before the Court?
The Africans, when found by Lieutenant Gedney, were in a free State, where all men are presumed to be free, and were in the actual condition of freemen. The burthen of proof, therefore, rests on those who assert them to be slaves. 10 Wheaton, 66; 2 Mason, 459. When they call on the Courts of the United States to reduce to slavery men who are apparently free, they must show some law, having force in the place where they were taken, which makes them slaves; or that the claimants are entitled in our courts to have some foreign law,--obligatory on the Africans as well as on the claimants,--enforced in respect to them; and that by such foreign law they are slaves.
It is not pretended that there was any law existing in the place
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