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294 knowingly wooed and won the affections of this lady with the knowledge that I was acting against your laws, then would I have been sinning, but acting as I did, without any consciousness of doing wrong, I hold that in the eyes of reason, in the eyes of common-sense, and in the eyes of unbiassed justice, I have committed no sin. I do not say this with any desire to evade the sentence that you have passed on me; but I say it to let you and your people know that I consider that you, in making an ignorant man amenable to laws that he did not know or understand, are committing an act of injustice that is unworthy of the intelligence that your nation is undoubtedly in possession of—an intelligence that is beyond all that it is possible for me to conceive, an intelligence that has astonished me beyond all measure. And, Mr. President, I would pray you in your great wisdom, should any such similar case as mine ever come before you, to think of the remarks that one so humble as I am in point of intellect and intelligence has ventured to make. But,