Perhaps, however, the question may arise,--whether the defendants did regard the commission under which they sailed as competent and adequate authority to justify their acts; or were they distrustful of its sufficiency? I do not admit, gentlemen, that that is a consideration to which in this trial we should recur, for your decision must rest on other grounds. But, I will not hesitate to say, that it is morally impossible for any man who has heard the evidence, and who is familiar with the course of events in the South, to believe that the defendants did not act in the fullest confidence that the authority of the Confederate States was ample and just authority for their undertaking. Even that one of the Savannah's crew who has become a witness for the prosecution, under a _nolle prosequi_, asserted on the stand, that at the time the Savannah was being fitted out for her cruise as a privateer, no one in the community of the South seemed to have any other idea but that the Government of the Confederate States was completely and legally established, and that every citizen of those States owed to it supreme allegiance. They believed that a letter of marque from the Confederate States constituted as good authority for privateering as the letters which were issued by our revolutionary fathers in '76, or as if they were issued by the United States. But, gentlemen, we are to proceed one step further, for under the theory presented by attorneys for the prosecution, they virtually admit that there was good faith on the part of the prisoners, and that they intended to comply with the restrictions imposed by the authority which they carried out of port with them. But they say that, inasmuch as the Confederate States were not a recognized Government, they could not confer any right upon the defendants to act as privateers, which could justify them in a plea to the pending charge. That is a proposition which enfolds the real issue in this trial. The difficulties in respect to its solution do not appear to me to be great, and I am satisfied that the more they are examined the less they will appear to candid minds. Had the Government of the Confederate States a right to issue letters of marque; or, in other words, to declare and wage war? The denial of that right, by the attorneys for the United States, involves them in inextricable embarrassments, and must expose the fallacies which lie at the bottom of the erroneous reasonings of the prosecution.