authority of the United States of America, run in their name, and by their authority, as of such a year of their independence, dating from the 4th July, 1776. Let me, therefore, show you what was done by the Colonies, in 1776, before and after the date of the Declaration of Independence; and let me show how many piracies our hardy seamen of those days must have committed, on the theory of the prosecution in this case. I read again from Cooper's Naval History: "Some of the English accounts of this period state that near a hundred privateers had been fitted out of New England alone, in the two first years of the war; and the number of seamen in the service of the Crown, employed against the new States of America, was computed at 26,000. "The Colonies obtained many important supplies, colonial as well as military, and even manufactured articles of ordinary use, by means of their captures,--scarce a day passing that vessels of greater or less value did not arrive in some one of the ports of their extensive coast. By a list published in the 'Remembrancer,' an English work of credit, it appears that 342 sail of English vessels had been taken by American cruisers, in 1776; of which number 44 were recaptured, 18 released, and 4 burned." Well, gentlemen, with these facts staring you in the face, I ask you if it is not flying in the face of history--if it is not rejecting and trampling in the dust the glorious traditions of our own country--to be asked seriously to sit in that jury box and try these men for their lives, as pirates and enemies of the human race, on the state of things existing here? Gentlemen, my mind may be under a strong hallucination on the subject; but I cannot conceive the theory on which the prosecution can come into Court, on the state of things existing, and ask for a conviction. Remember that, in saying that, I am speaking as a Northern man,--for I am a Northern man; I am speaking as a subject and adherent to the Government of the Union; I am speaking as one who loves the flag of this country--as one who was born under it--as one who hopes to be permitted to die under it; and I am speaking with tears in my eyes, because I do not want to see that flag tarnished by a judicial murder, and by an act cowardly and dastardly, as I say it would be, if we are to treat these men as pirates, while we are engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with them with arms in the field, and while they are asserting and maintaining the rights which we claimed for ourselves in former ages. In God's name, gentlemen, let us, if necessary, fight them; if we must have civil war, let us convince them, by the argument of arms, and by other arguments that we can bring to bear, that they are in the wrong; let us bring them back into the Union, and show them, when they get back, that they have made a great mistake; but do not let us tarnish the escutcheon of our country, and disgrace ourselves in the