e case and if any were, we should
abstain from offering an opinion upon it.

"'It is to the legal considerations connected with the case that
we have confined ourselves; and in this view of it we beg
respectfully to state that these prisoners having been once
already apprehended and in custody in this Province upon this
same charge and liberated by the decision of the Governor and
Council after a consideration of the case upon an application
made by the Government of Michigan, we should not think fit that
the Governor and Council should authorize a second apprehension
of the parties and exercise a second time the power and
discretion given by the Act--This course we think could not be
approved of unless, in the case of some atrocious offender, new
and strong evidence should be discovered which it was not in the
power of the foreign Government to produce upon a previous
application and for the want of which the prisoners were upon
such first application discharged, or perhaps in a case where
some official or legal formality had by mere accident been
overlooked on the first occasion.

"'Independently of the consideration that this case has been
already acted upon by the Government, the documents before us
place it in this light: the prisoners with the exception of
Blackburn and his wife are charged with assaulting and beating
the sheriff of Wayne and rescuing a prisoner from his custody,
Blackburn being the prisoner alluded to is charged with joining
in the riot and battery of the Sheriff and with unlawfully
rescuing himself--The wife of Blackburn we cannot find to be
sufficiently charged with any offence known to our laws which do
not acknowledge a state of slavery; for the imputation of
conspiring with the rioters and contriving the rescue is
supported by no evidence and seems to rest on conjecture--The
prisoner Blackburn it appears from the Documents before us was
not committed for felony nor for any crime nor imprisoned for any
cause which by our laws could be recognized as a justification of
imprisonment. We mention this not from any doubt that the
prisoner was in legal custody according to the laws of Michigan
but because the rescue of a prisoner constitutes by our law a
greater or less offence according to the degree of the crime f