tated, as
you will recollect. But consider under what
circumstances these alleged confessions were made. There
are circumstances which make such statements very
fallacious. Consider his excitement--his state of
health; for it is in evidence that he had been out of
health, suffering with some disorder which required his
head to be shaved. Consider the armed men that
surrounded him, and the imminent peril in which he
believed his life to be. It is great injustice to brand
him with the foul epithet of liar for any little
discrepancies, if such there were, in statements made
under such circumstances. Other matters have been forced
in, of a most extraordinary character, to prejudice his
case in your eyes. It has been suggested--the idea has
been thrown out, again and again--that, under pretence
of helping them to freedom, he meant to sell these
negroes. This suggestion, which outruns all reason and
discretion, is founded on the simple fact of a brig seen
lying at anchor in a place of common anchorage,
suggesting no suspicious appearance, but as to which you
are asked to infer that these seventy-six slaves were to
be transported into her, and carried to Cuba or
elsewhere for sale. What a monstrous imagination! What a
gross libel on that brig, her officers, her crew, her
owners, all of whom are thus charged as kidnappers and
pirates; and all this baseless dream got up for the
purpose of influencing your minds against the prisoner!
It marks, indeed, with many other things, the style in
which this prosecution is conducted.

"Take the law as laid down by the court, and it is
necessary for the government to prove, if this
indictment is to be sustained, that the prisoner
corrupted the minds of Houver's slaves, and induced and
persuaded them to go on board his vessel. They were
found on board the prisoner's vessel, no doubt; but as
to how they came there we have not a particle of
evidence. Here is a gap, a fatal gap, in the
government's case. By what second-sight are you to look
into this void space and time, and to say that Drayton
enticed them to go on board? [The counsel here read from
1 _Starkie on Evidence,_ 510, &c., to the effect that
the prosecution are bound by the evidence to exclude
every hypothesis inconsistent with the prisoner's
guilt.] N