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judging upon the Spanish laws.  How can our Courts do otherwise, when Spanish subjects call upon them to enforce rights which, if they exist at all, must exist by force of Spanish laws?  For what purpose did the Government of Spain communicate to the Government of the United States, the fact of the prohibition of the slave trade, unless it was that it might be known and acted upon by our Courts? Suppose the permits to Ruiz and Montez had been granted for the express purpose of consigning to perpetual slavery these recent victims of this prohibited trade, could the Government of Spain now ask the Government or the Courts of the United States to give validity to the acts of a colonial officer, in direct violation of that prohibition; and thus make us aiders and abettors in what we know to be an atrocious wrong? 

In may be admitted that, even after such an annunciation our cruisers could not lawfully seize a Spanish slaver, cleared out as such, by the Governor of Cuba: but if the Africans on board of her could effect their own deliverance, and reach our shores, has not the Government of Spain authorized us to treat them with hospitality as freemen? Could the Spanish minister, without offence, ask the Government of the United States to seize these victims of fraud and felony, and treat them as property, because a colonial governor had thought proper to violate the ordinance of his king, in granting a permit to a slaver?

But in this case we make no charge upon the Governor of Cuba. A fraud upon him is proved to have been practised by Ruiz and Montez. He never undertook to assume jurisdiction over these Africans as slaves, or to decide any question in regard to them. He simply issued, on the application of Ruiz and Montez, passports for Ladino slaves from Havana to Puerto Principe. When under color of those passports, they fraudulently put on board the Amistad, bozals, who, by the laws of Spain, could not be slaves, we surely manifest no disrespect to the acts of the Governor, by giving efficacy to the laws of Spain, and denying to Ruiz and Montez the benefit of their fraud. The custom-house license, to which the name of Espeleta in print was appended, was not a document given or intended to be used as evidence of property between Ruiz and Montex and the AFricans' any more than a permit from our custom-house would be to settle conflicting claims of ownership to the articles contained in the manifest. As between the government and the shippers, it would be evidence if the negroes described in the passport were actually put on board, and were in truth the property of Ruiz and Montez, that they were legally shipped: - that the custom-house forms had been complied with; and nothing more. But in view of the facts