We have now reached that stage in this interesting trial where the duty has been assigned to me, by my associates in this defence, of presenting to you the state of facts and the rules of law on which we expect to ask from you an acquittal of these prisoners. I could wish that it had been assigned to some one more able to present it to you than myself, for I feel the weight of this case pressing upon me, from various considerations connected with it, in a manner almost overpowering. I think that we have proceeded far enough in this case for you to have perceived that it is one of the most interesting trials that ever took place on the continent of America, if not in the civilized world. For the first time, certainly in this controversy, twelve men are put on trial for their lives, before twelve other men, as pirates and--as has been well expressed to you by the learned District Attorney who opened this case on behalf of the prosecution--as enemies of the human race. If you have had time, in the exciting progress of this trial, to reflect in your own minds as to what the import of these words was, it must certainly, ere this, have occurred to you that, in regard to these prisoners, whatever may be the legal consequences of the acts charged upon them, it was a misapplication of the term. Look for a moment, gentlemen, first, at the position of things in our country under which this trial takes place. All these prisoners come before you from a far distant section of the country. Some of them were not born there--some of them were. At the time when these events occurred all of the prisoners lived there, and were identified with that country, with its welfare, with its Government, whatever it was. They had there their homes, their families, everything which attaches a man to the spot in which he lives. Those of them who had not been born in America had sought it as an asylum. They had come from distant regions of the earth--some from the Chinese Sea and the remote East--because they had been taught there that America was the freest land on the globe. They had lived there for years. Suddenly they had seen the country convulsed from one end to the other. They had seen hostile armies arrayed against each other, the combatants being for the most part divided by geographical lines as to the place where they were born or as to the State in which they lived. This very morning a newspaper in the city of New York estimates the numbers thus arrayed in hostility against each other at no less than seven hundred thousand souls. These prisoners have the misfortune, as I say, of being placed on their trial far from their homes. They have been now in confinement and under arrest on this charge for some four or five months. During that whole period they have had no opportunity whatever of communicating with their friends or relatives. Intercourse has been cut off. They have had no opportunity of procuring means to meet their