self-preservation authorizes the distressed to take a supply by force.  In all these cases, the unwritten laws of necessity, of self-preservation, and of the public safety, control the written laws of meum and tuum.  Further to exemplify the principle, I will state an hypothetical case.  Suppose it had been made known to the executive of the Union in the autumn of 1805, that we might have the Floridas for a reasonable sum, that that sum had not indeed been so appropriated by law, but that Congress were to meet within three weeks, and might appropriate it on the first or second day of their session.  Ought he, for so great an advantage to his country, to have risked himself by transcending the law and making the purchase?  The public advantage offered, in this supposed case, was indeed immense:  but a reverence for law, and the probability that the advantage might still be legally accomplished by a delay of only three weeks, were powerful reasons against hazarding the act.  But suppose it foreseen that a John Randolph would find means to protract the proceeding on it by Congress, until the ensuing spring, by which time new circumstances would change the mind of the other party.  Ought the executive, in that case, and with that foreknowledge, to have secured the good to his country, and to have trusted to their justice for the transgression of the law?  I think he ought, and that the act would have been approved.  After the affair of the Chesapeake, we thought war a very possible result.  Our magazines were illy provided with some necessary articles, nor had any appropriations been made for their purchase.  We ventured, however, to provide them, and to place our country in safety; and stating the case to Congress, they sanctioned the act.

To proceed to the conspiracy of Burr, and particularly to General Wilkinson’s situation in New Orleans.  In judging this case, we are bound to consider the state of the information, correct and incorrect, which he then possessed.  He expected Burr and his band from above, a British fleet from below, and he knew there was a formidable conspiracy within the city.  Under these circumstances, was he justifiable, 1.  In seizing notorious conspirators?  On this there can be but two opinions; one, of the guilty and their accomplices; the other, that of all honest men. 2.  In sending them to the seat of government, when the written law gave them a right to trial in the territory?  The danger of their rescue, of their continuing their machinations, the tardiness and weakness of the law, apathy of the judges, active patronage of the whole tribe of lawyers, unknown disposition of the juries, an hourly expectation of the enemy, salvation of the city, and of the Union itself, which would have been convulsed to its centre, had that conspiracy succeeded; all these constituted a law of necessity and self-preservation, and rendered the salus populi supreme over the written law.  The officer who is called to