"Again: in the eye of the law, Mr. S. would be regarded as an absconded debtor, and had there been a court of common pleas in this city, Mr. G. could have had an attachment issued, and the goods of Mr. S. seized and held by virtue of that attachment. True, Mr. S. has not left the State--and in most of the States the law requires that the party shall have left the State before an attachment can issue--but, under the present state of things, Mr. S. has as virtually left the State, or at least the jurisdiction of a court in Alexandria, as though he had gone to England. I certainly should have taken this view of the case had I been presiding in a common pleas court, and this case been brought before me, and I doubt not any other judge would have done the same. In law, as in other things, 'circumstances alter cases,' and it is the duty of a court always to consider circumstances, and to give such construction to law as will best promote the ends of justice. "Nor does this principle at all conflict with another, so often and so strongly insisted upon by this court, namely, that abandoned property shall not be taken for private gain. Had any party, having no just claim upon Mr S., attempted to take for his own use and profit any of the goods left by Mr. S. in that store-room, this court, if informed of the attempt, would have used all its power to prevent such taking, and, if already taken, the court would have made the party return the goods to the place from whence taken. But the case in hand is altogether different. Here the party has a claim, a just claim, indeed an implied, if not a legal ownership in the goods which he seeks to take, and, instead of preventing, it becomes the duty of the court to assist in the transfer.