t.

"'The conclusion therefore which we have come to is that these
parties are not charged with any of the offences enumerated in
the statute annexed and consequently that the Lieutenant Governor
and council are not authorized by its provisions to send them out
of the Province. It has not escaped our attention as a peculiar
feature in this case that two of the persons whom the Government
of this Province is requested to deliver up are persons
recognized by the Government of Michigan as slaves and that it
appears upon these documents that if they should be delivered up
they would by the laws of the United States be exposed to be
forced into a state of Slavery from which they had escaped two
years ago when they fled from Kentucky to Detroit; that if they
should be sent to Michigan and upon trial be convicted of the
Riot and punished they would after undergoing their punishment be
subject to be taken by their masters and continued in a state of
Slavery for life, and that on the other hand if they should never
be prosecuted or if they should be tried and acquitted this
consequence would equally follow. Among the Documents before us
we perceive there are papers which have been delivered to the
Government in behalf of the alleged rioters in which this
inevitable consequence is urged as a reason against their being
sent back to Michigan and in which it is intimated that to place
the slaves again within the power of their masters is the
principal object and that the Government of Michigan in making
application for them is rather influenced by the interest and
wishes of the slave owners than by any desire to bring the
parties to trial for the alleged riot. No consideration of this
kind has had any weight with us, for in the first place as
regards the insinuation against the motives of the Government of
Michigan if we had any thing to do with them we should consider
(as no doubt this Government would consider in any similar case)
that courtesy towards the Government of a foreign country
requires always to assume that it has no motive or design on
these occasions which is not just and fair and in short none but
such as is openly avowed. And in the next place as to the
consequence spoken of--If it would follow in course from the laws
of the United S