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PEDRO GIBERT AND OTHERS. 739

to the countenance and eye of the prisoner a new expression.
‘We see guilt written in every lineament of his visage, and
translate the look of conscious innocence into raffian hardi-
hood, or callous indifference.

These men, gentlemen, are accused of the crime of piracy,
and sre consequently viewed with horror as robbers and mur-
derers. Let me entreat you to lay aside sll prepossessions of
this kind and not suppose, because the prisoners are accused,
that they are guilty. There is not a man perhaps who has
looked upon these individuals, but has said in hig heart,
‘‘Why, they can’t be innocent; what hardened villaing they
are.’? And doubtless, if a phenologist had examined them,
he would have decided them to possess the bumps indicative
of these propensities, which have filled the world with vio-
lence and blood. I venture, however, to say that the men be
fore you differ only in the color of their skins, from the most
respectable crew that ever sailed out of the port of Boston.
Prejudices exist, too, in relation to the place from which they-
come. We are too apt to suppose the Havana a mere nest of
pirates, and to believe that the same sun which, in some coun-
tries, ao speedily ripens and brings to perfection the produc-
tions of the vegetable world, induces similar precocity and
redundancy of crime.

Even Spain, with its romantic associations, has but a sorry
reputation among us; our imagination usually paints a Span-
ish sailor with the bloody knife in his hand. And yet we have
heard this day related a striking instance of Spanish hu-
manity. A vessel, in cirenmstances of extreme peril, lay
aground on the Bahama bank. Her crew and passengers
(many of the latter women and children) awaited death from
the two most opposite elements, fire and water. While in this
situation, one our own ships, like the Levite and Priest in the
Seriptures, passed by and left the sufferers unnoticed. But
another man, like the good Samaritan in the parable to which
T have alluded, saw and rescued them. And this man, was he
a Yankeet an Americant No! he was a Spaniard! and his
name was Bernardo De Soto!

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