and ammunition, to be sent through the byways and swamps to the enemy."

1. There was no proof before me that this mode of returning the draft to the claimants was selected by them, or that they had any knowledge of it until "the army of the United States captured" it on the 10th of May. Conceding, argument gratia, that the fact, if brought home to the claimants as a part of the original plan, would affect the question, I have decided the conclusive answer to it is that the fact was not in any way proved. The United States and you, as their honored representative, were the actors in the sequestration. It was for you to establish, not by statement, but by evidence, every fact which you deemed mjudicial. In discharging it it was my duty to regard alike all the parties tot he controversy. The money you had exacted was that of the claimants. You alleged that it was forfeited to the United States by some act of civil illegality or of moral or legal crime. It was for you to make the charge good. Every fact tending to that end it was for you to establish. The absence of proof of it established the case of the claimants and entitled them to the return of the money. If, therefore, the manner of the attempted transmission of the third of exchange and account sales in the Fox, with a contraband mail even more destructive than arms and ammunition, or, to use your own words, "contraband mails and scarcely less destructive arms and ammunition" (what kind of a mail that was passes my comprehension), affected the question of sequestration or forfeiture, it was for you to verify it, not for the claimants to disprove it or, as the judge between you, for me to assume it.

Third. The only fact upon which you have put me right is that the seizure was made before and not after the blockade was raised. But however material that may be in other cases, if it exists, the absence of it in the present instance does not in any way affect the judgment which I have pronounced. Having thus disposed of the facts on which we differ I proceed to consider the other points of your review.

First. That I erred in holding that the third of exchange, when seized, did not represent the property that run the blockade. What I did say was, "that bill was not the representative of the cotton, as far as that fact was material to the case before me." My decision was pronounced on the 22nd instant. The cotton was sold in Havana in April and the proceeds invested in sterling on the 30th of that month. These bills were not drawn in favor of the claimants, but of a third party, and the first and second transmitted by their order to London to be placed to their credit.

That they had not reached their destination at the ure is immateriahed it long before my decision was given, and having been paid by the drawers, the possession of the third by the claimants, or by you claiming under them, gave no and the mailing at Havana of the first and second, directed to the proper parties in London, was equivalent to the receipt, unless it was made to appear that they never reached them.

A letter deposited in a legal mail is ever held, till the contrary appears, to be a delivery, and no intervening act on the part of a person mailing it can in any way affect the legal results of actual delivery. This is a proposition too familiar to need citation, at least "by a lawyer to a lawyer." I consequently forbear any. The rebel representative of the cotton is the proceeds. These are money, and