Now, your honors will notice what the crime in the ninth section of the Act of 1790 is. It is not piracy so described, nor robbery so described merely, but it is a statutory definition of the crime, which includes a particular description and predicament of the offender (the eighth section having included all persons), and also defines the subject of the robbery, or the object of the piratical aggression. It is this: "If any citizen shall commit any piracy or robbery aforesaid, or any act of hostility against the United States, or any citizen thereof," &c. "Piracy or robbery aforesaid" would, of course, include the definition of the crime as embraced in the eighth section. But, the ninth section proceeds to add a new and substantive completeness of crime, not described either as piracy or robbery, to wit: "Or any act of hostility against the United States, or any citizen thereof, upon the high seas, under color of any commission from any foreign Prince or State, or on pretence of authority from any person, such offender shall, notwithstanding the pretence of any such authority, be deemed, adjudged, and taken to be a pirate, felon, and robber, and, on being thereof convicted, shall suffer death." Now, it is quite immaterial whether this statute is accurate in declaring the offender to be "a pirate, felon, and robber." It has made the offence a crime. Under what restrictions has it made it a crime? Has it undertaken to extend the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, as supported by the law of nations respecting piracy, which is a right on the part of every nation to legislate not only for its own citizens--not only in protection of its own property--but in punishment of all pirates, of whatever origin, and in protection of all property on sea, and wherever owned? Now that, undoubtedly, is the jurisdiction under the law of nations, and neither by the Constitution has Congress received any greater power under the law of nations than that, nor, I respectfully submit, can it receive any greater power under the law of nations; that is, Congress cannot receive any power greater than that which other nations, not bound by our municipal statutes, would be bound to respect, as sustained by the law of nations. Now I agree that "any act of hostility against the United States, or any citizen thereof," would not necessarily be up to the grade and of the quality of piracy under the law of nations; and that the Congress of the United States, in undertaking to make laws which would create an offence, and punish it as piracy, which was not piracy by the law of nations, and in seeking to enforce its jurisdiction and inflict its sanctions on a people who owed it no municipal obedience, and in protection of property over which it had no municipal control, and no duty to perform, could not control foreign nations; and that foreign nations would not be bound to respect convictions obtained under such a