Mr. Wickham, and Mr. Starke; and on that of the defendant, Mr. Henry^ Mr. Marshall, (the present chief justice of the United States) Mr. Alexander Campbell, Mr. Innis, the attorney general of Virginia: I mention their names in the order in which they spoke on their respective sides.
The cause was opened with great fairness and abi- lity, by Mr. Ronald and Mr. Baker, in succession; they were answered by all the counsel of the defendant; and Mr. Wickham, Mr. Starke, and Mr. Baker were heard in the reply.
The opening counsel made the following points:
First, That debts were not a subject of confiscation, in war.
Secondly, That if they were, Virginia at the time of passing the acts relied on by the defendant, was not a sovereign and independent state; Great Britain, not having at that time assented to her independence; and hence, that she had not the power of legislating away the debts of fellow-subjects, not represented in her legislative councils — ^^vhich councils were themselves, a usurpation, in the eye of the law.
Thirdly, That if debts were subject to confiscation, and Virginia were competent to pass laws to that effect, she had not done so; and Mr. Baker, particularly, en- tered into a minute and ingenious scrutiny of the lan- guage of the several acts of assembly, to prove that, so far from having been forfeited, the debts were re- cognized as existing British debts down to the year 11S2.
Fourthly, That if all these points were against the plaintiff, the right of recovering those debts was re- stored by the treaty of 1783, and the constitution of
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