that these people should overlook this distinction, however obvious and important.  Nor do they lack wit to apply these speeches to their own case or interest in such matters.  I myself have a slave as quick to see distinctions as I am, and who would have made a better lawyer if he had had the same advantages.  It came out the other day, in a trial in this court, that the colored people have debating-societies among themselves.  It was an assault and battery case; one of the disputants, in the heat of the argument, struck the other; but then they have precedents for that in the House of Representatives.  Is it an impossible, or improbable, or a disproved supposition, that a number of slaves, having agreed together to desert their masters, or having concerted such a plan with somebody here, Drayton was employed to come and take them away, and that he received them on board without ever having seen one of them?  If his confessions are to be taken at all, they are to be taken together; and do they not tend to prove such a state of facts?  Drayton says he was hired to come here,—­that he was to be paid for taking them away.  Does that look as if he seduced them? [The counsel here commented at length on Drayton’s statements, for the purpose of showing that they tended to prove nothing more than a transportation for hire; and he threw no little ridicule on the ‘phantom ship’ which the District Attorney had conjured up in his opening of the case, but which, in his late speech, he had wholly overlooked.]

“But, even should you find that Drayton seduced these slaves to leave their masters, to make out a case of larceny you must be satisfied that he took them into his possession.  Now, what is possession of a slave?  Not merely being in company with him.  If I ride in a hack, I am not in possession of the driver.  Possession of a slave is dominion and control; and where is the slightest evidence that this prisoner claimed any dominion or control over these slaves?  The whole question in this case is, Were these slaves stolen, or were they running away with the prisoner’s assistance?  The mere fact of their being in the prisoner’s company throws no light whatever on this matter.

“The great point, however, in this case is this,—­By the judge’s instructions, enticement must be proved.  Shall the record of this trial go forth to the world showing that you have found a fact of which there was no evidence?

“I believe in my conscience there is a gap in this evidence not to be filled up except by passion and prejudice.  If that is so, I hope there is no one so ungenerous, so little of a true southerner, as to blame me for my zeal in this case, or not to rejoice in a verdict of acquittal.  It is bad enough that strangers should have got up a mob in this District in relation to this matter.  It would, however, be a million times worse if juries cannot be found here cool and dispassionate enough to render impartial verdicts.