that is in the hands of a third party or of an agent of the claimants, who is out of the rightful jurisdiction of the United States. In no sense can the third bill be esteemed its representative. It is, on the contrary, worth no more than the paper on which it was drawn. if, therefore, the right in this case to seize as forfeited the outward cargo was limited into the country on the return voyage, then, with all the confidence that I am at liberty to feel when differing from so enlightened a jurist as yourself, I repeat that the third bill is not "to be esteemed the proceeds of the shipment and liable to seizure."

Second. But you suppose that my application of the rule of national law, if I a right in the other particular, "turns upon a non-appreciation of the law, as to what is the effect of a blockade," and that, "as applied to this transaction, the citations and arguments derived from elementary writers upon the laws of nations are of no avail." Your reasons for this repudiation of the authorities which, in my simplicity, I cited, are that in this case "a traitorous commercial house directly engages in the treasonable work of aiding a rebellion against the Government, by entering into a trade, the direct effect of which is to furnish the rebels with arms and ammunition. To do this they intentionally violate the revenue laws, the postal laws of their country, as well as the laws prohibiting trade with foreign countries from this prot, and are caught in the act, and fined only the amount of the proceeds of their illegal treason able transaction."

First. I have already endeavored to correct the effort of fact in the first party of this quotation. There was no evidence before me when my decision was given, nor is there now, that the house of the claimants was a "traitorous, commercial house," entering into a trade, the direct "effect of which is to furnish the rebels with arms and ammunition." On the contrary, the proof-the legal proof-is the other way.

1. No such proof was or has been produced in support of the charge.

2. It does not appear that the claimants ever made any other shipment than the particular one.

3. They deny, and denied in your presence and in mine, that they entered, in making the shipment, into an aground to return a part of the proceeds in arms, &c., for the rebels.

4. It affirmatively appears that the entire proceeds were invested in sterling and remitted to London, to be passed also in their entirely to the credit of the house.

No treason, therefore, was perpetrated unless the running the blockade with cotton to be sold, and proceeds to be passed to the shippers" credit, and to be used in the payment of their loyal creditors residing in the loyal State of Massachusetts, was treason. Treason under the Constitution of the United States can "consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." It would be a strange commentary on this clear and precise definition to hold that a citizen of the United States, by shipping his cotton abroad for sale, even in violation of a blockade, with directions to his correspondents to pass proceeds to his credit to be used in the discharge of honest debts due to loyal men, either levies war upon the Government or gives aid and comfort to its enemies. In times like the present every patriotic citizen, acting at moments without due reflection, seizes upon any means which he may think will tend in any way to suppress the existing unjustifiable and