My Lords, many daring robberies have been committed in this city, and, in spite of the utmost vigilance of the police, no discovery could be made of the perpetrators. At length, upon the Friday after the robbery of the Excise Office, Brown went to Mr. Middleton, a person employed by the Sheriff, and told him such circumstances as led to a discovery. From this, my Lords, I am bound to suppose that he had repented of what he had done, and I conceived it to be my duty not to prosecute him, but, on the contrary, to make use of his evidence as a means of discovery of the rest of his accomplices. After this, my Lords, it was found that he had been convicted at the Old Bailey. I then applied for advice to those whom I thought were best enabled to assist me concerning the law of England on this subject, and I learned, my Lords, that the proper method to be followed was to apply for a pardon. There is no occasion for making a mystery of the matter, it was the Recorder of London I did apply to. He is a gentleman necessarily more versant in these matters than any other man in the kingdom. By his advice, I applied for a pardon and accordingly obtained it. But, my Lords, there was no occasion for a pardon in this case; the witness, in my opinion, would have been just as admissible without it. The sentence by which he was condemned is to us entirely a foreign sentence, and, therefore, upon the universally received principle of law, that _statuta non obligant extra territorium statuentis_, it can be of no force with us, unless from that politeness, termed _comitas_ by the law, which civilised nations pay to the decrees of each other, and, accordingly, unless your Lordships shall, _ex comitate_, be disposed to give effect to the decree of a foreign Court, this objection is such as cannot even be listened to in the first instance, the crime said to be committed by Brown having been committed in England, and the sentence pronounced against him being the sentence of an English Court. My Lords, your Lordships in another capacity, in the civil Court, do not as a matter of course give effect to foreign decrees. In every instance you must be satisfied that the decree is consistent with equity and justice before you interpone your authority. And this holds more particularly in such decrees as infer a penalty, in which case, indeed, some lawyers think, and my Lord Kames declares himself to be clearly of that opinion, that no weight whatever is attached to a foreign decree. But, my Lords, even laying this out of the question, His Majesty’s most gracious pardon, which I hold in my hand, puts an end to all objection at once. There is not, indeed, a clearer point than that a pardon from the King takes away the effects of any former sentence, and makes the person pardoned precisely the same person he was before the sentence was pronounced against him.