THE TRIAL
OF
JOSEPH PETERS,
This was an indictment against Joseph Peters for violating the 51st of George III. chap. 23, by selling and bartering certain natives of Africa, who were sold for the purpose of being treated, used, dealt with, and transferred as slaves. The Court met on the 11th of June, 1812; on the indictment being read by the Clerk of the Crown, the prisoner pleaded Not Guilty.
Mr. Biggs, as counsel for the Crown, opened the case with lamenting, that notwithstanding the general promulgation of the laws against the slave trade, it should still be practised, and that too under the very eye of the government, which was most active and prompt to discover the offenders and bring them to punishment. The evidence to be heard, would prove that the prisoner had very lately sold several unhappy Africans into slavery; and that, in fact, these victims of his avarice were persons over whom he had not even the shadow of rightful authority, much less had he a property in them, as is sometimes absurdly and inhumanly said, when speaking of the Blacks. It would, the counsel was sorry to state, be found, that the prisoner at the bar had not one circumstance in his favour,
