such a design. Whether the restraints practiced upon the tewo seamen in question were "hard treatment" and a 'severe measure" as you have characterized them, or whether it was proper treatment of course depends altogether as you seem to admit upon the circumstance whethers exceeded the rigor which reasonable prudence required for the security of the capturing and her prize on their way to port for adjudication.

You seemed to have assumed that any confinement of the seamen especially in irons in such a case must by law be presumed to be unnecessary and therefore unreasonable and severe, and that consequently it devolves upon the officer who makes the capture to exculpate himself from the general charge of hardness or severity by showing that the rigor practiced was necessary in the act complained of. I submit on the contrary that in these as in all other cases it rests with the complaintant to show in his statement the facts and circumstances which constitute the grievence before the accused party can be called upon to deny or at least justify the conduct alleged against him. I proceed to examine the case of the two seamen of the Revere in the light of this rule.

On the 6th of October your lordship addressed me a note in which you stated that you therewith handed to me a copy of a dispatch as well as a copy of a letter and an attested copy of an affidavit. you added that you desired to recommend to my favorable consideration the request to which those papers referred that the mate of the British schooner Revere, who appeared to be detained at Fortress Monroe, might appear at Boston as a witness for the defense of the vessel before the prize court at that city. You added that you desired also to direct my attention to the unusual in which the master and crew of the Revere appeared to have been treated, and especially to the fact of two of the crew having been kept (as it would seem very unjustly) in irons. You closed with requesting me to return the attested copy of the affidavit to you.

Your request that the captain might be allowed to appear at the prize court was promptly granted. The attested copy of an affidavit was returned to you as requested without a copy of it having been taken in the Department, as it was not then supposed that you thought it would the purpose of showing that you had grounds for calling my attention to the subject of the confinement of the seamen. It is necessary to state that the dispatch was silent upon the subject of the confinement of the seamen. A copy of your note together with a copy of the dispatch annexed to it was on the 7th day of October, the very day of their receitp, by me submitted to the Secretary of the Navy with a request in general terms for the information necessary to enable me to reply to the note.

On the 11th of November I had the honor to receive from your lordship a second note bearing date on the 7th of that month in which you recited that on the 10th of October (meaning the 6th) you had directed my attention to the unusual manner in which the master and crew of the British schooner Revere appeared to have been treated after the capture of their vessel by the U. S. ship Cambride, and especially to the fact that two of the crew had been kept in irons. You then proceeded to lay before me another and kindred complaint about the rigor practiced as you assumed upon two seamen of another and different vessel. But you gave me no information whatever concerning the two seamen of the Revere. A copy of this last paper was transmitted by me to the Secretary of the Navy on the 12th day of November. The