_Mr. Brady_: I will only mention to you that, when I argue the question hereafter, and answer your suggestions, I will refer to the case of _The United States_ v. _Smith_, (5 _Wheaton_, 153,) where Mr. Webster conceded, in the Federal Court, that this original Act defining piracy was, as respects the language I have referred to, not a constitutional exercise of the power conferred on Congress. He took the ground that the statute made a general reference to the law of nations as defining piracy, whereas, in his view, Congress should have proceeded to state what were the elements of the offence. I want to use that, in my argument, as an illustration of how strictly the Courts have held that it was never intended that even the case of taking a commission in a foreign service and making war against the United States, which might be treason, should be converted into piracy by any necromancy or alchemy of the law, such as the gentleman seems to have in view. _Mr. Evarts_: Whenever a statute declares an offence to be a certain offence, that offence the Courts must hold it to be. The nomenclature of the Legislature is not to be quarreled with by the Courts which sit under its authority. They are to see that the crime is proved. What the crime is called is immaterial. _Mr. Brady_: Then the Legislature might say that speaking offensive words on the high seas by our citizens is piracy. _Mr. Evarts_: They can call it piracy, and punish it. _Mr. Brady_: Yes, by death! _Mr. Evarts_: It does not come under the law of nations as piracy, but under the general control of Congress over our citizens at sea. In other words, no nation depends, in the least, on the law of nations and its principles for the extent of its control over its own citizens on the high seas, or for the extent of the penalties by which it protects its own commerce against the acts of its own citizens on the high seas. It takes cognizance of such offences by the same plenary power by which it takes cognizance of offences on land. The difference with us would be, that the State government would have the control of these offences when committed on the land, as a general rule, and they would come within the Federal jurisprudence and the Federal legislation only by their being committed on the high seas. Now, what was said by Mr. Webster in the case of _The United States_ v. _Smith_, a case arising under the Act of 1819? Mr. Webster argued that the special verdict did not contain sufficient facts to enable the Court to pronounce the prisoner guilty of the offence charged--that his guilt could not be necessarily inferred from the facts found, but that they were, on the contrary, consistent with his innocence--but that, even supposing the offence to have been well found by the special verdict, it could not be punished under the Act of 1819, because that Act was not a constitutional exercise of the power of Congress to define and punish