t seems to have in view two capital objects: the first, to enable
administration to confine, as long as it shall think proper, those whom
that act is pleased to qualify by the name of _pirates_. Those so
qualified I understand to be the commanders and mariners of such
privateers and ships of war belonging to the colonies as in the course
of this unhappy contest may fall into the hands of the crown. They are
therefore to be detained in prison, under the criminal description of
piracy, to a future trial and ignominious punishment, whenever
circumstances shall make it convenient to execute vengeance on them,
under the color of that odious and infamous offence.

To this first purpose of the law I have no small dislike, because the
act does not (as all laws and all equitable transactions ought to do)
fairly describe its object. The persons who make a naval war upon us, in
consequence of the present troubles, may be rebels; but to call and
treat them as pirates is confounding not only the natural distinction of
things, but the order of crimes,--which, whether by putting them from a
higher part of the scale to the lower or from the lower to the higher,
is never done without dangerously disordering the whole frame of
jurisprudence. Though piracy may be, in the eye of the law, a _less_
offence than treason, yet, as both are, in effect, punished with the
same death, the same forfeiture, and the same corruption of blood, I
never would take from any fellow-creature whatever any sort of advantage
which he may derive to his safety from the pity of mankind, or to his
reputation from their general feelings, by degrading his offence, when I
cannot soften his punishment. The general sense of mankind tells me that
those offences which may possibly arise from mistaken virtue are not in
the class of infamous actions. Lord Coke, the oracle of the English law,
conforms to that general sense, where he says that "those things which
are of the highest criminality may be of the least disgrace." The act
prepares a sort of masked proceeding, not honorable to the justice of
the kingdom, and by no means necessary for its safety. I cannot enter
into it. If Lord Balmerino, in the last rebellion, had driven off the
cattle of twenty clans, I should have thought it would have been a
scandalous and low juggle, utterly unworthy of the manliness of an
English judicature, to have tried him for felony as a stealer of cows.

Besides, I must honestly tell you th