By some means, the arrest became known, and counsel appeared for the prisoner. Your commissioner was informed that the prisoner had only been seized an hour and a half before, and had not heard the charge against him; that his counsel had had no time to learn the plaintiff's case, nor to prepare for the defence; that there were persons residing at a distance, some in New Jersey and some in Wilmington, who would be important witnesses in his behalf. On these grounds, a motion was made for a continuance. And what, Sir, do you suppose was the reply made by the slave-catching judge to this motion? "THE HEARING IS TO BE A SUMMARY ONE: LET IT PROCEED." No doubt you fully participate in Mr. Webster's indignation against Austrian barbarity; but see no barbarity in this accursed proceeding against a _colored_ American. The hearing did proceed, and James S. Price, on behalf of the plaintiff, swore that the prisoner was Emery Rice, the man claimed, but knew nothing further about his being a slave, except that he had seen him riding the claimant's horse. Had _heard it said_ the prisoner was a slave. This was the amount of the testimony on behalf of the claimant. Any honest jury, nay, any honest judge, would instantly have decided in favor of the prisoner. Not so MR. EDWARD D. INGRAHAM. The counsel for the defendant asked again for a postponement, and founded the motion on the _oath_ of the defendant, that he could procure six persons, naming them, to testify to his freedom. A delay of ONE HOUR was asked for. This was refused, and the judge(!) sent for a certificate to sign. During the delay thus occasioned, one of the six persons named by the defendant appeared, and swore that he had known the prisoner all his life. That he was not Emery Rice, but Adam Gibson; that he was a freeman, having been manumitted by the will of his late master. Mr. Brown produced a copy of the will of the late master, and it so far confirmed the testimony of the witness. Another person in the crowd now came forward, and swore that he also knew the prisoner, and that he was a free person, and that he was Adam Gibson. But all was in vain. The commissioner signed the certificate, and, with an obtuseness of intellect which marked him as a fit subject for a commission of lunacy, declared, "He had no doubt of the identity of the prisoner with the slave Emery Rice, and that _all other proceedings must be before the courts of Maryland_, whither he would send him."[1] And so the prisoner, without seeing his wife and children, whom he had that morning parted from unsuspicious of danger and unconscious of crime, was hurried off at the expense of our glorious model republic, under an escort of officers, who delivered him, not to the courts of Maryland, but to Mr. William S. Knight, the reputed owner. But Mr. Knight told the officers, "You have brought me a wrong man; this is not Emery Rice; this man is no slave of mine." And so Adam Gibson