ts they have been
uniform and steady. I have thus long avoided troubling your Excellency
with this case, in hopes it would receive its decision in the ordinary
course of law, and I relied, that that would indemnify the sufferers,
if they had been used unjustly: but though they have been in close
confinement now near three months, it has yet no appearance of
approaching to decision. In the mean time, the cold of the winter is
coming on, and to men in their situation, may produce events which
would render all indemnification too late. I must, therefore, pray the
assistance of your Excellency, for the liberation of their persons, if
the established order of things may possibly admit of it. As to their
property and their personal sufferings hitherto, I have full confidence
that the laws have provided some tribunal where justice will be done
them. I enclose the opinion of an advocate, forwarded to me by a
gentleman whom I had desired to obtain, from some judicious person of
that faculty, a state of their case. This may perhaps give a better idea
than I can, of the situation of their cause. His inquiries have led him
to believe they are innocent men, but that they must lose their vessel
under the edict, which forbids those under thirty tons to approach the
coast. Admitting their innocence, as he does, I should suppose them not
the objects on whom such an edict was meant to operate. The essential
papers, which he says they re-demanded from him, and did not return,
were sent to me, at my desire. I am, with sentiments of the highest
respect, your Excellency's most obedient

and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

_The case of Lister Asquith, owner of the schooner William and
Catharine, William M'Neil, captain, William Thomson, William Neily,
Robert Anderson, mariners, and William Fowler, passenger_.

Lister Asquith, citizen of the State of Maryland, having a lawsuit
depending in England which required his presence, as involving in its
issue nearly his whole fortune, determined to go thither in a small
schooner of his own, that he might, at the same time, take with him an
adventure of tobacco and flour to Liverpool, where he had commercial
connections. This schooner he purchased as of fifty-nine and a quarter
tons, as appears by his bill of sale, but she had been registered by
her owner at twenty-one tons, in order to evade the double duties in
England, to which American vessels are now subject. He cleared out from
Balti