The learned counsel who spoke last Saturday, referred to privateering as a relic of the barbarous age. No one agrees with the learned counsel in that respect more than I do; and from the bottom of my heart I hope that he may be yet able to take his share in banishing from the world this relic of the olden time. But, really, I see very little chance of advancement in that line, so long as a vessel of war is allowed to take private property on the seas. There should be perfect immunity for all property on the ocean belonging to individuals; but the letter of Mr. Marcy shows that we are not yet exactly up to that point. The learned counsel stated that, before he could concede the commission in this case to be a justification, two things must be shown: First, there must be a state of war; and, second, the privateer must have received his commission from some public, national, sovereign power. Well, we think we have shown the existence of war sufficiently strongly; and as to this point, I fancy that few gentlemen of the bar can forget the pointed and admirable allusion of the learned counsel himself (Mr. Evarts), in his argument in the District Court, some time since, to the absent clerk, in illustrating the fact of the existence of war. I remember how forcibly it struck me when I read it. The decisions in the case of the South American privateers settles the point as to the nationality. But, gentlemen, there is another subject to which I will briefly allude--that is, the abstract right of these States legally to secede. Now, gentlemen, we do not deny that there is no such right. I concede all that. Yet, still, these men have ever held different notions; and, on this subject, a line has been drawn for many years through an immense tract of this our country. The right or the wrong of it does not affect us here. You have failed to convince them, and they have failed to convince you. There is no common arbiter between you, because they contend that, being sovereigns, they cannot submit to the Courts questions between themselves and the United States. Now, they may be wrong, but have you the right to declare them so? You ought to be perfectly certain. Justice, reason, and duty prompt that there ought to be no mistake. When you hold a party for a criminal charge, there ought not to be a reasonable doubt. Is there no possibility that, in the course of the proceedings between the Federal and State Governments, you may be wrong? Does truth only consort with one side of the line, and falsehood with the other? May you not be mistaken? Look at the different lights in which, for years, you have respectively viewed various questions. See how gradually the change has been effected; and yet how stronger and stronger it has grown day by day. Can any one forget the deep and intense anxiety with which that great statesman, Mr. Clay, just before his death, regarded the division between the Methodist and Baptist Churches of the North and the South? And yet no