My learned friends have said, using the force of the argument in aid of their cause, that France and England have recognized the insurgents as belligerents, and have precluded themselves from treating as pirates private armed vessels that shall derive authority from these rebellious powers. Well, by the same law of nations that gave to France and England this right thus to elect, they had the right to determine, and to announce by proclamation, that the peace of the world upon the ocean should not be disturbed, under pretence of war, by these insurgents, and that, if they should resort to private armed vessels to inflict aggressions and disturb the commerce of the world, they would be treated as pirates. And if, under the law of nations, the political authorities of France and England had thus announced their policy that these insurgents should be treated as pirates, I would like to know if advocates would be heard, in the Court of Queen's Bench or in the Courts of France, to urge that the Court, wiser than its Government, should, in the exercise of sovereign discretion under the law of nations, tolerate, as an act of war, what is piracy by municipal statute or the law of nations, unless accredited as part of a warlike movement. Would those Courts permit the defence to be made, that what were declared to be acts of piracy were acts of war,--the Government having so elected and so announced, that it would regard them as acts of piracy and not as acts of war? Now, I am arguing this case altogether on this point, as if the Government from which this Court derives its authority--whose laws we are administering--whose authority is vested in your honors on this trial--stood as a stranger to and spectator of this contest, and it was really a controversy between parts of another nation. And all I have claimed is, that our Government, in common with the other nations of the world, has, by the law of nations, the right, in its discretion, to determine how this proceeding shall be treated, and what consequences shall follow from it. Now, I need not say that, treating our Government as if it stood _ab extra_, and as if, passing its judgment on what was going on, it had determined that these privateers should be regarded as pirates, they should not be recognized as having the right of war, or the right, as an inchoate nationality, to perfect their independence.