The first evidence in their favour is that of John Evergin, a native of N'o Carolina, who professes himself to be a child of the Spirit. In April last, having been taken prisoner by the said Don Pedro Estrado, & brought to S't Augustine, he consented, for the value of a share in the profits, to pilot them in the bowels of his native country, and betrayed his countrymen to that cruel and barbarous nation. Can your Honour confide in a man who has betrayed his countrymen, robbed them of their lives, and what was dearer to them, their liberty? One who has exposed his brethren to imminent danger & reduced them and their families to extreme want by fire & sword, can the evidence, I say, of such a vile wretch, who has forfeited his liege to his King by entering the enemy's service, and unnaturally sold his countrymen, be of any weight in a court of justice? No, I am certain, and I hope it will meet with none to prove that these slaves are freemen; for all that he has said, by his own confession, was only but hearsay. The other evidence is of a villain of another stamp, a French runnagado, Jean Baptiste Domas. His evidence is so contradictory that I hope it will meet the same fate as I think will befall the first. I will own that he has sworn to it. But how? On a piece of stick made in the shape of a thing they name a cross, said to be blest and sanctified by the polluted words & hands of a wretched priest, a spawn of the whore of Babylon, who is a monster of nature & a servant to the Devil, who for a _real_ will pretend to absolve his followers from perjury, incest, or parricide, and canonize them for cruelties committed upon we heretics, as they style us, and even rank them in the number of those cursed saints who by their barbarity have rendered their names immortal & odious to all true believers. By devils such as these they swear, and to them they pray. Can your Honour, then, give credit to such evidence, when there is no doubt that it was agreed between the witnesses to swear that the negroes were free? This they might easily do, for there is no question but they told him so; and to swear it was but a trifle, when absolution can be got so cheap. It does not stand to reason, that slaves, who are in hopes of getting their freedom, would acknowledge themselves to be slaves. Do not their complexion and features tell all the world that they are the blood of negroes, and have sucked slavery & cruelty from their infancy? Can any one think, when we call to mind that barbarous action[B] committed on his Majesty's brave subjects at the retaking of the fort at S't Augustine, which was occasioned by the treachery of their vile General, when he sacrificed them to that barbarous colour, that it was done by any who had the least drop of blood either of liberty or Christianity in them? No, I am confident your Honour can't think so; no, not even of their Gov'r, under whose vile commission this was suffered to be done, and went unpunished.