curl of contempt play upon the lips, of the old hero of Lundy's Lane, as he hears the foul imputation upon the stainless honor of the well-tried friend of many years. No, gentlemen, these men are not pirates! they are not robbers! Your own hearts tell you they are not. Truly, it may indeed be said, that civil war does pervert the natural taste, and relish of equity and of justice. But, gentlemen, what is the object of this prosecution? Can the united States desire revenge on these men? That is a passion not attributable to States. States have no passion. The dignity and the power of a State ought to make it tolerant. Is it because the President's proclamation has pronounced these men pirates? Certainly, the respected Chief Magistrate of these United States has no disposition to enforce this law, simply because he has declared it, as in the case of King Ahasuerus. Is their punishment sought for the good of the community? If it is designed for such a purpose, its effect is very questionable. It is extremely strange, gentlemen, that the prosecution should have been, any how, brought on now, and under this Act. Is it a strange fact, gentlemen, that, under the Act of William the Third, which has been cited to you, there was not, during the American Revolution, a single American privateersman ever brought to trial in England. And yet the English Government repeatedly captured them, and put them in prison. That Act is just as strong as this, for the ninth section of our Act of 1790 is copied from it. I suppose the truth is, gentlemen, that the English Government felt the utter inapplicability of that law to a case of this kind. But, it is time that I should draw to a close. If these men have been brought into the position in which they now stand, much depends upon their political education--much depends upon the different views with which they have regarded this question from ourselves. It is the part of humanity to err. These men are the representatives of those who were once united with us in the gentle tie of brotherhood. That tie is now rent, and it may be years before the kindly and good feeling which once subsisted between the sections is restored. God grant that the hour may not be far distant! But, gentlemen, to treat these men with kindness; to treat them with humanity; to have respect for that great principle which underlies the bottom of our own Government--the right of resistance (and I mean here legal resistance, and not that revolutionary resistance which the Courts of justice do not adopt, and never have, and cannot sanction),--I say, to treat them with kindness and humanity will do more, in my honest belief, to knit together the two sections than a hundred battle-fields would do.