The vessel had, however, been at Cadiz, where, according to the representation made on behalf of the prosecution she was really meant to go first, in order to provide herself with the slave instructions, which the Court would not receive, though strongly pressed, as evidence against the agent who had managed the vessel in England so far as chartering and loading her; and yet, although it had been said by Serjeant Bompas “that wherever a vessel leaves a place such as Spain, or some place where she may leave with impunity, with all her equipments complete,” she does so; and although this vessel, which has been charged by the prosecution to have gone into Cadiz for the very purpose of helping the illegal object imputed: she is found not to have been there equipped--and that not from any great attention to the safety of the adventure, for the letters contended to be so clearly slave instructions for the voyage seem to have been there put on board--still the observation is not the less applied, that she was not equipped for the slave trade, because she could not have been so in an English port, without any reference to the fact that the prosecution had contended she could and would have so been at a Spanish port. There she had, however, touched; and that too, according to the prosecution, for the very express purpose of helping the illegal object in a manner more condemnatory than any other. The thing demanded from the prisoner is, however, a plain and simple account of the intent of the foreign merchant in this transaction, and without his being able to give that, every other circumstance which may be favourable to him, either vanishes away, or converts itself into a weapon against him. Again, the counsel for the defence had put the following case to the Jury:--“You may be manufacturers of guns or gunpowder, or commission-agents living in this country, who, for the purpose of shipment, purchase those goods; in either case a party comes and says--I want 1,000 muskets and six tons of gunpowder to be shipped to a certain place on the coast of Africa. I ask you, are you first to consult the map to ascertain the place, and, having ascertained where it is, are you to go to Captain Hill or Captain Denman and inquire whether they have been upon the coast of Africa, and can tell you the character of the trade carried on there? Are you next, the person being a Spaniard or a Portuguese, to inquire whether they ever deal in slaves; and if you find they do, are you to say, I will execute no order you give me?”