prisoner, if juries were to act without strict obedience to law, and a strict observance of the forms of law. Any appeals, therefore, made to you, that because this prisoner may have committed _some_ offence against law, you are, therefore, to discard all scruples and find him guilty of _this_ offence, I regard as treason against justice, as a monstrous perversion of judicial proceedings; yes, as a thousand times worse than any guilt of the prisoner, even supposing the distorted features of the picture, drawn by the government’s counsel, to be genuine. It would be nothing less than Lynch law, perpetrated by twelve picked and sworn men, instead of a mob. Gentlemen, the district attorney in his opening has not deigned to tell us on what law he proceeds. He has accused the prisoner of stealing often enough, but has read no statute, and referred to no decision, which creates or describes any such offence. Hence a task which clearly belonged to him is devolved upon me. After the District of Columbia was ceded to the United States, Congress passed a general law, adopting the laws of Maryland, for that part of the District which had been ceded by Maryland. This trial, therefore, must proceed upon laws originally passed by Maryland. By the act of 1737, ch. 2, § 4, it is provided that any person “who shall steal any negro or other slave,” “or who shall counsel, hire, aid, abet, or command any person or persons” to do so, shall suffer death as a felon. The punishment has since been changed to imprisonment in the United States prison, for a term of not less than seven, nor more than twenty years. [Here comments were made at length on the preamble of the statute, and the class of cases to which the law was intended to apply.] This act was designed to prevent slaves from being _stolen_. But a man might lose a slave without his being stolen. The slave might be enticed or persuaded to run away. Experience, doubtless, made the masters aware of this. Hence, fourteen years afterwards, by the act of 1751, ch. 14, § 10, it was provided that “if any person shall entice and persuade any slave within this province to run away, and who shall actually run away from the master,” &c., he shall be punished, &c. But there was still another way of depriving a master of the service of his slave. Hence the act of 1796, ch. 67, § 19, made it a separate and distinct offence for any person to be guilty of “the transporting of any slave or person, held to service,” from the state.