The undersigned, his Britannic Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States of America, has the honor of laying before the Secretary of State, the following brief abstract of the case of Thomas Pagan, a subject of his Britannic Majesty, now confined in the prison of Boston, under an execution issued against him out of the Supreme judicial court of Massachusetts Bay. To this abstract, the undersigned has taken the liberty of annexing some observations, which naturally arise out of the statement of the transaction, and which may perhaps tend to throw some small degree of light on the general merits of the case. In the late war, Thomas Pagan was agent for, and part owner of a privateer called the Industry, which, on the 25th of March, 1783, off Cape Ann, captured a brigantine called the Thomas, belonging to Mr. Stephen Hooper, of Newport. The brigantine and cargo were libelled in the court of vice-admiralty in Nova Scotia, and that court ordered the prize to be restored. An appeal was, however, moved for by the captors, and regularly prosecuted in England before the Lords of Appeals for prize causes, who, in February, 1790, reversed the decree of the vice-admiralty court of Nova Scotia, and condemned the brigantine and cargo as good and lawful prize. In December, 1788, a judgment was obtained by Stephen Hooper in the court of common pleas for the county of Essex, in Massachusetts, against Thomas Pagan, for three thousand five hundred pounds lawful money, for money had and received to the plaintiff's use. An appeal was brought thereon in May, 1789, to the Supreme judicial court of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, held at Ipswich, for the county of Essex, and on the 16th of June, 1789, a verdict was found for Mr. Hooper, and damages were assessed at three thousand and nine pounds two shillings and ten pence, which sum is "for the vessel called the brigantine Thomas, her cargo and every article found on board." After this verdict, and before entering the judgment, Mr. Pagan moved for a new trial, suggesting that the verdict was against law; because the merits of the case originated in a question, whether a certain brigantine called the Thomas, with her cargo, taken on the high seas by a private ship of war called the Industry, was prize or no prize, and that the court had no authority to give judgment in a cause where the point of a resulting or implied promise arose upon a question of this sort. The supreme judicial court refused this motion for a new trial, because it appeared to the court, that in order to a legal decision it is not necessary to inquire whether this prize and her cargo were prize or no prize, and because the case did not, in their opinion, involve a question relative to any matter or thing necessarily consequent upon the capture thereof: it was therefore considered by the court, that Hooper should receive of Pagan three thousand and nine pounds two shillings and ten