to all true believers.  By devils such as these they swear, and to them they pray.  Can your Honour, then, give credit to such evidence, when there is no doubt that it was agreed between the witnesses to swear that the negroes were free?  This they might easily do, for there is no question but they told him so; and to swear it was but a trifle, when absolution can be got so cheap.  It does not stand to reason, that slaves, who are in hopes of getting their freedom, would acknowledge themselves to be slaves.  Do not their complexion and features tell all the world that they are the blood of negroes, and have sucked slavery & cruelty from their infancy?  Can any one think, when we call to mind that barbarous action[B] committed on his Majesty’s brave subjects at the retaking of the fort at S’t Augustine, which was occasioned by the treachery of their vile General, when he sacrificed them to that barbarous colour, that it was done by any who had the least drop of blood either of liberty or Christianity in them?  No, I am confident your Honour can’t think so; no, not even of their Gov’r, under whose vile commission this was suffered to be done, and went unpunished.  It was headed by this Francisco, that cursed seed of Cain, cursed from the foundation of the world, who has the impudence to come into Court and plead that he is free.  Slavery is too good for such a savage; nay, all the cruelty invented by man will never make amends for so vile a proceeding; and if I may be allowed to speak freely, with submission, the torments of the world to come will not suffice.  God forgive me, if I judge unjustly!  What a miserable state must that man be in, who is under the jurisdiction of that vile & cruel colour!  I pity my poor fellow creatures who may have been made prisoners in this war, and especially some that were lately sent to the Havanah, and all by the treachery of that vile fellow, John Evergin, who says he is possessed with the spirit of the inward man, but was possessed with the spirit of Beelzebub, when he piloted the cursed Spaniards over the bar of Obricock, as it has been proved in Court.

[Footnote B:  It was reported that the English and American prisoners of war had been barbarously mutilated and tortured.]

I don’t doubt but this tragical act, acted at St Augustine, has reached home before now.  This case, perhaps, may travel as far; and when they remember the sufferings of their countrymen under the command of this Francisco, whom we have got in possession, together with some of his comp’y who were concerned with him & under his command in that inhuman act, they will agree, no doubt, as I hope your Honour will, that they must be slaves who were concerned in it.  I hope, therefore, that by the contradictions which have been shown in Court between this Jean Baptiste Domas, who affirms he never saw them till on board the privateer, and the evidence of Francisco & Augustine, which proves that they knew him some months before, and conversed with him, is proof enough they are slaves; and I hope that by the old law of nations, where it says that all prisoners of war, nay, even their posterity, are slaves, that by that law Pedro Sanche & Andrew Estavie will be deemed such for the use of the capturers.  So I rest it with your Honour.