It will be needless, I believe, Sir, to bring any further proof than what has been already brought & sworn to in Court to prove the right & power we had to seize this sloop & cargo on the high seas, & bring her here for condemnation.  There is a late act of parliament, made in the 12th year of his present Majesty’s reign, wherein it says, that all vessels belonging to His Majesty’s subjects of Great Britain or Ireland, which shall have been taken by the enemy, and have been in their possession the space of 96 hours, if retaken by any private man of war, shall belong one half to the capturers, as salvage, free from all charges.  As this has been fully proved in court, that the time the enemy has had her in possession is above 96 hours, I don’t doubt but the one half, free of all charges, will be allotted us for salvage.  The thing about which there is any dispute is the three mulattoes & one negro, all slaves, taken by the prize, & said to belong to some vassals or subjects of the King of Spain; and it is put upon us by this court to prove that they are so, which I hope to do by several circumstances, and the insufficiency of the evidence in their favour, which amounts to nothing more than hearsay.

The first evidence in their favour is that of John Evergin, a native of N’o Carolina, who professes himself to be a child of the Spirit.  In April last, having been taken prisoner by the said Don Pedro Estrado, & brought to S’t Augustine, he consented, for the value of a share in the profits, to pilot them in the bowels of his native country, and betrayed his countrymen to that cruel and barbarous nation.  Can your Honour confide in a man who has betrayed his countrymen, robbed them of their lives, and what was dearer to them, their liberty?  One who has exposed his brethren to imminent danger & reduced them and their families to extreme want by fire & sword, can the evidence, I say, of such a vile wretch, who has forfeited his liege to his King by entering the enemy’s service, and unnaturally sold his countrymen, be of any weight in a court of justice?  No, I am certain, and I hope it will meet with none to prove that these slaves are freemen; for all that he has said, by his own confession, was only but hearsay.  The other evidence is of a villain of another stamp, a French runnagado, Jean Baptiste Domas.  His evidence is so contradictory that I hope it will meet the same fate as I think will befall the first.  I will own that he has sworn to it.  But how?  On a piece of stick made in the shape of a thing they name a cross, said to be blest and sanctified by the polluted words & hands of a wretched priest, a spawn of the whore of Babylon, who is a monster of nature & a servant to the Devil, who for a real will pretend to absolve his followers from perjury, incest, or parricide, and canonize them for cruelties committed upon we heretics, as they style us, and even rank them in the number of those cursed saints who by their barbarity have rendered their names immortal & odious