pointed master. George Fowler Trenholm, the former master, was now converted into a supercargo; and the whole conduct and entire controul of the ship and adventure were committed to him, without his even receiving any instructions whatever from the alleged owner, Joao de Souza. The only part of the cargo taken on board at Madeira consisted of some articles of provisions for the voyage.

On the 6th of October this vessel sailed from Madeira, and, when about seven or eight miles distant from the harbour of Funchall, was captured by his Majesty's ship Melampus, Captain Hawker, and sent to Plymouth.

The evidence obtained by means of the standing interrogatories afforded strong suspicion that the sale at Madeira was a fraudulent and collusive transaction; and this suspicion was afterwards fully confirmed: and it clearly appeared, from the mere inspection of the vessel, independently of other corroborating circumstances, that the object of the voyage was to procure a cargo of Slaves on the coast of Africa:

The judgment of the Court, delivered by the Right Hon. Sir William Scott, on the 12th of March 1811, was to the following effect.

"This ship, bearing the Portuguese flag, was taken and brought in as prize, and proceeded against as such by the captor. Depositions were taken; and it was not until a considera

ble time afterwards, that a claim was given by the master for this ship as the property of a Portuguese owner. The captor in this case, as in other cases of prize proceedings, gave no special allegation. The act of bringing her in, and proceeding against her, alleges her generally to be a subject of prize rights, but the captor is not called upon to state, at the commencement of the suit, the particular grounds on which he contends that she is so. He has a right to institute the inquiry, and he takes the chance of the benefit of any fact that may be produced in the result of that inquiry. This is a great advantage on the side of the captor, but it is controuled by his liability to costs and damages if the inquiry produces nothing; and it is fully balanced by the advantage given to the claimant in this species of proceeding, that no evidence shall be admitted against him but such as proeeeds from himself, from his own documents, and from his own witnesses; the captor not being permitted, except in cases marked by peculiar circumstances, to furnish any evidence whatever. In the present case it is not, I think, competent for the claimant to object that the captor had no right to institute an inquiry whether the ship was Portuguese or American. The captor instituted no such inquiry: he alleged her simply to be prize, and proceeded against

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her generally as such. If in the course of that general inquiry it turns out that she is shewn to be clearly American, he has a complete right to avail himself of any benefit that may legally result from the capture of an American ship found in the circumstances that are attributed to this ship at the time of her capture. If she is liable to confiscation on any ground arising from those circumstances so discovered, he is not to be told that the discovery has been produced in a way of which he has no right to take the advantage.

"An American ship, quasi American, is entitled upon proof to immediate restitution; but she may forfeit, as other neutral ships may, that title, by various acts of misconduct-by violations of belligerent rights most clearly and universally. But though the prize law looks primarily to violations of belligerent rights as grounds of confiscation in vessels not actually belonging to the enemy, it has extended itself a good deal beyond considerations of that description only. It has been established by recent decisions of the supreme court, that the Court of Prize, though properly a court purely of the law of nations, has a right to notice the municipal law of this country in the case of a British vessel which, in the course of a prize proceeding, appears to have been trading in violation of

that law, and to reject a claim for her on that account. That principle has been incorporated into the prize law of this country within the last twenty years, and seems now fully incorporated. A late decision, in the case of the Amedie, seems to have gone the length of establishing a principle, that any trade contrary to the general law of nations, although not tending to or accompanied with any infraction of the belligerent rights of that country, whose tribunals are called upon to consider it, may subject the vessel employed in that trade to confiscation. The Amedie was an American ship employed in carrying on the Slave Trade; a trade which this country, since its own abandonment of it, has deemed repugnant to the law of nations, to justice and humanity, though without presuming so to consider and treat it, where it occurs in the practice of the subjects of a state which continues to tolerate and protect it by its own municipal regulations: but it puts upon the parties who are found in the occupations of that trade the burthen of shewing that it was so tolerated and protected; and on failure of producing such proof, proceeds to condemnation, as it did in the case of that vessel. How far that judgment has been universally concurred in and approved, is not for me to inquire. If there be those who disap

prove it, I am certainly not at liberty to include myself in that number, because the decisions of that Court bind authoritatively the judicial conscience of this; its decisions must be conformed to, and its principles practically adopted. The principle laid down in that case appears to be, that the Slave Trade carried on by a vessel belonging to a subject of the United States is a trade which, being unprotected by the domestic regulations of their legislature and government, subjects the vessel engaged in it to a sentence of condemnation. If the ship should therefore turn out to be an American actually. so employed; and it matters not, in my opinion, in what stage of the employment, whether in the inception, or the prosecution, or the consummation of it; the case of the Amedie will bind the conscience of this Court to the effect of compelling it to pronounce a sentence of confiscation.

"The first and great question of fact is, whether this ship is American or not; and it is objected, as exclusive of any possible imputation of that character, that she is sailing with a Portuguese flag and pass, which impress upon her a Portuguese character conclusively; and many passages have been cited out of the reports of the cases adjudged in this Court, in which such a doctrine seems to be held out in terms. But the