The Liberator

The Amistad.

A question of more than ordinary interest is now pending before the Supreme Court of the U. States. It concerns the liberty and perhaps the lives of some forty negroes, who came upon our coast in the Spanish schooner Amistad. It will be remembered that these negroes were apprehended at the time on charges of piracy and murder—that subsequently they were discharged by Judge Thompson of the U. S. Circuit Court, on the ground that the courts of the United States had no cognizance of crimes committed in a foreign jurisdiction—and that immediately after this decision was made known, the Spanish Minister demanded these negroes as fugitive criminals, under the 9th article of our treaty with Spain. The validity of this demand is now under consideration in the Supreme Court, and from the array of counsel on either side, it is manifest that the ablest intellects in the country have been tasked with the investigation of this high and important question. The decision of the court is looked for in various quarters of the Union with considerable anxiety, and every step of the discussion closely and eagerly watched.

It was to have been hoped that no extraneous influence would have been brought to bear upon the decision of a question involving interests of such magnitude. It seems, however, that the Washington Globe, the organ of the Government, is determined that the court shall understand at least in what manner the administration would desire to have the question disposed of. That journal, on the eve of the meeting of the Supreme Court, publishes a long and labored article urging the delivery of the negroes to the Spanish Minister, in compliance with the demand of that functionary. We do not indeed suppose that the authority of the Washington Globe is of any great weight with the Judges of the Supreme Court; but the attempt to throw by indirection its official authority—be it more or less—into the scale of justice, and that too on the side adverse to humanity, not to say right, is a most dangerous and discreditable act. Fortunate indeed is it for the country that a few brief weeks will terminate the official career of the Globe, and thus strip it of all that ever gave character or importance to the outpourings of its conductor's malice, impudence and ignorance.