Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. Is the clerk here from the Court of Admiralty?
Mr. Kelly. I take for granted that the papers to be produced in Court are the papers given to this gentleman by Captain Jennings.
Mr. Serjeant Bompas. Yes, they have been produced before; we shall want them in a moment.
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. What steps did you take upon receiving these papers?—I took the papers on board my own vessel on purpose to read them. It was towards the close of the evening I received them, and I sent an order on board the Saracen that an officer and a certain number of men should be sent to me, and I entrusted that officer with the charge of the vessel.
Did you, in consequence of the view you took afterwards, detain the vessel?—Yes, I detained the vessel.
She was afterwards taken, I believe, to Sierra Leone?—Yes.
Did you prosecute her there?—
Mr. Kelly. I must object to all this—
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. I thought that that might be taken as a fact; the evidence of Mr. Zulueta before the Committee is in evidence; and there it is stated that the vessel was condemned, because Captain Jennings had no funds to defend her: I thought I might take that as a fact.
Mr. Kelly. No, nothing of the kind; I object to any evidence of the proceedings in Sierra Leone respecting this vessel. Mr. Zulueta, as it appears by what is in evidence, namely, his own statement before the Committee of the House of Commons, was the agent of Messrs. Martinez & Co. for the purchase of this vessel, and afterwards the shipment of the goods, but was no party at all to any proceeding, judicial or otherwise, which took place in Sierra Leone. Now judicial proceedings, in which there is a judicial sentence, are no doubt evidence, and may be very important evidence against the parties to those proceedings; but I apprehend as that was a proceeding to which Mr. Zulueta was no party, they are not evidence against him here.