Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New YorkWarburton, A. F. (Adolphus Frederick)
History
Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York
Warburton, A. F. (Adolphus Frederick)
Piracy -- United States; Privateering -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
My learned friends have treated this latin phrase, _animo furandi_, as
if it meant _animo fruendi_--as if the point was, not the intent to
despoil another, but the intent to enjoy the fruits of the crime
themselves. Now, I need not say that a man who robs his neighbor to
give the money to charity, despoils him, _animo furandi_, just as much
as if he did it with the intention of using the money for his own
purposes of pleasure or profit. That is the point, and all the cases
cited only touch the question of whether, in the violent taking, or the
fraudulent taking, imputed as a crime, there could be supposed by the
Jury to be, on any evidence introduced, any honest thought, even the
baseless notion, on the part of the offender, that the property was not
that of the man from whom he took it, but was his own. I have not seen
anything in this evidence which should lead us to suppose that Mr.
Baker and his crew thought that this vessel, the Joseph, belonged to
them, and that they took her under a claim of right, as property of
their own. The right under which they acted was a supposed right to
make it their own, it then and there being the property of somebody
else--to wit, of the United States of America, or of some of its
citizens. So, your honors will find, that except so far as the
considerations of the moral quality of this crime, in regard to its not
being furtive and stealthy, are raised and supported by the general
considerations which are to change this transaction from its private
quality and description into a certain public dignity, as part of a
wider contest, and which considerations are to be disposed of by the
views which your honors may take of the affirmative proposition of the
defence, which would make this privateering at least an act of
hostility in flagrant war--except so far, I say, as these
considerations are concerned, I need not say anything more as to the
completeness of the ingredients, both of force, and of robbery or
despoiling another, necessary to make up the crime.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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