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are tried, which allows them every chance for life humanity can suggest or require: for after the most careful examination of witnesses, and the fullest debate on both sides from the bar, the jury have instructions about the evidences given, and the point of law which is to guide them in their decision, from the bench; and are shut up in a room, where they must remain until they agree, and return their unanimous verdict, guilty or not guilty.
[Sidenote] Pirates favored by the colonists.
Notwithstanding the excellence of this form of trial, it must be confessed that justice has not always had its free course, nor been administered with impartiality by the officers and judges appointed by the proprietors for this purpose. Pirates, for instance, are a body of men whom all civilized nations are bound in honour and justice to crush; yet, instead of this, by bribery and corruption they often found favour with the provincial juries, and by this means escaped the hands of justice. About this time forty men arrived in a privateer called the Royal Jamaica, who had been engaged in a course of piracy, and brought into the country treasures of Spanish gold and silver. These men were allowed to enter into recognizance for their peaceable and good behaviour for one year, with securities, till the governor should hear whether the proprietors would grant them a general indemnity. At another time a vessel was shipwrecked on the coast, the crew of which openly and boldly confessed, they had been in the Red sea plundering the dominions of the Great Mogul. The gentleness of government towards those public robbers, and the civility and friendship with which they were treated by the people, were evidences of the licentious spirit which prevailed in the colony. For although all men ought to be tender of the lives of their fellow-creatures, and permit ten guilty persons to escape rather than one innocent man should suffer; yet, to bring pirates to justice is a duty which both national honour and the common welfare of soci