shoulder.  Ruiz immediately started up, and with violent gesticulations protested against such conduct, and was joined by his companions.  The Court reprimanded the witness severely.  The trial occupied fourteen days.  The counsel for the prisoners were David L. Child, Esq., and George Hillard, Esq., who defended them with great ability.  Mr. Child brought to the cause his untiring zeal, his various and profound learning; and exhibited a labour, and desperation which showed that he was fully conscious of the weight of the load—­the dead lift—­he had undertaken to carry.  Mr. Hillard concluded his argument, by making an eloquent and affecting appeal to the jury in behalf of the boy Costa and Antonio Ferrer, the cook, and alluded to the circumstance of Bernardo de Soto having rescued the lives of 70 individuals on board the American ship Minerva, whilst on a voyage from Philadelphia to Havana, when captain of the brig Leon.

[Illustration:  Explosion of the Panda.]

If, gentlemen, said he, you deem with me, that the crew of the Panda, (supposing her to have robbed the Mexican,) were merely servants of the captain, you cannot convict them.  But if you do not agree with me, then all that remains for me to do, is to address a few words to you in the way of mercy.  It does not seem to me that the good of society requires the death of all these men, the sacrifice of such a hecatomb of human victims, or that the sword of the law should fall till it is clogged with massacre. Antonio Ferrer is plainly but a servant.  He is set down as a free black in the ship’s papers, but that is no proof that he is free.  Were he a slave, he would in all probability be represented as free, and this for obvious reasons.  He is in all probability a slave, and a native African, as the tattooing on his face proves beyond a doubt.  At any rate, he is but a servant.  Now will you make misfortune pay the penalty of guilt?  Do not, I entreat you, lightly condemn this man to death.  Do not throw him in to make up the dozen.  The regard for human life is one of the most prominent proofs of a civilized state of society.  The Sultan of Turkey may place women in sacks and throw them into the Bosphorus, without exciting more than an hour’s additional conversation at Constantinople.  But in our country it is different.  You well remember the excitement produced by the abduction and death of a single individual; the convulsions which ensued, the effect of which will long be felt in our political institutions.  You will ever find that the more a nation becomes civilized, the greater becomes the regard for human life.  There is in the eye, the form, and heaven-directed countenance of man, something holy, that forbids he should be rudely touched.

The instinct of life is great.  The light of the sun even in chains, is pleasant; and life, though supported but by the damp exhalations of a dungeon, is desirable.  Often, too, we cling with added tenacity to life in proportion as we are deprived of all that makes existence to be coveted.