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transaction; and that the papers of the vessel were simulated and fraudulent in respect to her destination and that of her cargo. A condemnation is not asked if the cargo was in fact neutral property, to be delivered at Cardenas for discharge and general consumption or sale there, but is only claimed if the cargo was really intended to be delivered to the enemy at some other place than Cardenas, after using that port as a port of call or of trans-shipment, so as to thus render the representations contained in the papers of the vessel false and fraudulent as to the real destination of the vessel and her cargo. "It would scarcely seem possible that there could be any serious debate as to the true principles of public law applicable to the solution of the questions thus presented; and, indeed, the law is so well settled as to make it only necessary to see whether the facts in this case bring the vessel and her cargo within the rules which have been laid down by the most eminent authorities in England and in this country.

"The principles upon which the government of the United States, and the public vessels acting under its commission, have proceeded, during the present war, in arresting vessels and cargoes as lawful prize upon the high seas, are very succinctly embodied in the instructions issued by the Navy Department on the 18th of August, 1862, to the naval commanders of the United States, and which instructions are therein declared to be a recapitulation of those theretofore from time to time given. The substance of those instructions, so far so they are applicable to the present case, is, that a vessel is not to be seized without a search carefully made, so far as to render it reasonable to believe that she is engaged in carrying contraband of war for or to the insurgents, and to their ports directly or indirectly by trans-shipment, or otherwise violating the blockade.'

"The main feature of these instructions, so far as they bear upon the questions involved in this case, is but an application of the doctrine in regard to captures laid down by the government of the United States at a very early day. In an ordinance of the Congress of the Confederation, which went into effect on the 1st of February, 1782, 5 Wheaton, Appendix, p. 120, it was declared to be lawful to capture and to obtain condemnation of all contraband goods, wares, and merchandises, to whatever nations belonging, although found in a neutral bottom, if destined for the use of an enemy?

"The soundness of these principles, and the fact that the law of nations, as applicable to cases of prize, has been observed and applied by the government of the United States and its courts during the present war, was fully recognized by Earl Russell, her Britannic

Majesty's principal secretary of state for foreign affairs, in his remarks made in the House of Lords on the 18th of May last. Earl Russell there stated that the judgments of the United States prize courts, which had been reported to her Majesty's government during the present war, did not evince any disregard of the established principles of international law; that the law officers of the Crown, after an attentive consideration of the decisions which had been laid before them, were of opinion that there was no rational ground of complaint as to the judgments of the American prize courts; and that the law of nations in regard to the search and seizure of neutral vessels had been fully and completely acknowledged by the government of the United States. On the same occasion Earl Russell remarked: 'It has been a most profitable business to send swift vessels to break or run the blockade of the southern ports, and carry their cargoes into those ports. There is no municipal law in this or any country to punish such an act as an offence. I understand that every cargo which runs the blockade and enters Charleston is worth a million of dollars, and that the profit on these transactions is immense. It is well known that the trade has attracted a great deal of attention in this country from those who have a keen eye to such gains, and that vessels have been sent to Nassau in order to break the blockade at Charleston, Wilmington, and other places, and carry contraband of war into some of the ports of the Southern States.' He added: 'I certainly am not prepared to declare, nor is there any ground for declaring, that the courts of the United States do not faithfully administer the law; that they will not allow evidence making against the captors; or that they are likely to give decisions founded, not upon the law, but upon their own passions and national partialities.' He also said, that in a case of simulated destination-that is, a vessel pretending that she is going to Nassau, when she is in reality bound to a port of the enemy-the right of seizure exists.

"The then solicitor-general of England (Sir Roundell Palmer) stated, in the House of Commons, on the 29th of June last, referring to the cases of the Dolphin and the Pearl, decided by the district. court for the southern district of Florida (those vessels having been captured while ostensibly on voyages from Liverpool to Nassau, and it having been held by the court that the intention of the owners of the vessels was that they should only touch at Nassau, and then go and break the blockade at Charleston), that if the owners imagined that the mere fact of the vessel touching at Nassau when on such an expedition exonerated her, they were very much mistaken;' that the principles of the judgment in the case of the Dolphin were to

be found in every volume of Lord Stowell's decisions;' that it was well known to everybody that there was a large contraband trade between England and America by way of Nassau; that it was absurd to pretend to shut their eyes to it; and that the trade with Nassau and Matamoras had become what it was in consequence of the war. "The Foreign Office of Great Britain, in a letter to the owner of the Peterhoff, on the 3d of April last, announced as its conclusion, after having communicated with the law officers of the Crown, that the government of the United States has no right to seize a British vessel bona fide bound from a British port to another neutral port, unless such vessel attempts to touch at, or has an intermediate or contingent destination to, some blockaded port or place, or is a carrier of contraband of war destined for the enemy of the United States; that her Majesty's government, however, cannot, without violating the rules of international law, claim for British vessels navigating between Great Britain and such neutral ports any general exemption from the belligerent right of visitation by the cruisers of the United States, or proceed upon any general assumption that such vessels may not so act as to render their capture lawful and justifiable; that nothing is more common than for those who contemplate a breach of blockade or the carriage of contraband, to disguise their purpose by a simulated destination and by deceptive papers; and that it has already happened, in many cases, that British vessels have been seized while engaged in voyages apparently lawful, and have been afterwards proved in the prize courts to have been really guilty of endeavoring to break the blockade, or of carrying contraband to the enemy of the United States.

"The cases of the Stephen Hart, the Springbok, the Peterhoff, and the Gertrude illustrate a course of trade which has sprung up during the present war, and of which this court will take judicial cognizance, as it appears from its own records and those of other courts of the United States as well as from public reputation. Those neutral ports have suddenly been raised from ports of comparatively insignificant trade to marts of the first magnitude. Nassau and Cardenas are in the vicinity of the blockaded ports of the enemy, while Matamoras is in Mexico, upon the right bank of the Rio Grande, directly opposite the town of Brownsville, in Texas. The course of trade, in respect to Nassau and Cardenas, has been generally to clear neutral vessels, almost always under the British flag, from English ports for those places, and, using them merely as ports either of call or of trans-shipment, to either resume new voyages from them in the same vessels, or to trans-ship their cargoes to fleet steamers, with which to run the blockade, the cargoes being composed, in almost

all cases, more or less, of articles contraband of war. The character and course of this trade, and its sudden rise, are very properly commented upon in a despatch from the Secretary of State of the United States to Lord Lyons, of the 12th of May, 1863.

"The broad issue upon the merits in this case is, whether the adventure of the Stephen Hart was the honest voyage of a neutral vessel from one neutral port to another neutral, carrying neutral goods between those two ports only, or was a simulated voyage, the cargo being contraband of war, and being really destined for the use of the enemy, and to be introduced into the enemy's country by a breach of blockade by the Stephen Hart, or by trans-shipment from her to another vessel at Cardenas. It is conceded in the argument of the leading counsel for the claimants that if the property was owned by the enemy, and was fraudulently on its way to the enemy as neutral property, it was enemy's property, and was liable to capture, no matter whence it came or whither it was bound; and that, if the vessel were really intending and endeavoring to run the blockade, the property was liable to capture, no matter to whom it belonged or what was its character; but that if it was neutral property, in lawful commerce, it was safe from seizure.

"The question whether or not the property laden on board of the Stephen Hart was being transported in the business of lawful commerce, is not to be decided by merely deciding the question as to whether the vessel was documented for, and sailing upon, a voyage from London to Cardenas. The commerce is in the destination and intended use of the property laden on board of the vessel, and not in the incidental, ancillary, and temporary voyage of the vessel, which may be but one of many carriers through which the property is to reach its true and original destination. If this were not the rule of the prize law, a very wide door would be opened for fraud and evasion. A cargo of contraband goods, really intended for the enemy, might be carried to Cardenas in a neutral vessel sailing from England with papers which, upon their face, import merely a voyage of the vessel to Cardenas, while in fact, her cargo, when it left England, was destined by its owners to be delivered to the enemy by being trans-shipped at Cardenas into a swifter vessel. And such, indeed, has been the course of proceeding in many cases during the present war.

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"The law seeks out the truth, and never, in any of its branches, tolerates any such fiction as that under which it is sought to shield the vessel and her cargo in the present case. If the guilty intention, that the contraband goods should reach a port of the enemy, existed when such goods left their English port, that guilty

intention cannot be obliterated by the innocent intention of stopping at a neutral port on the way. If there be, in stopping at such port, no intention of trans-shipping the cargo, and if it is to proceed to the enemy's country in the same vessel in which it came from England, of course there can be no purpose of lawful neutral commerce at the neutral port by the sale or use of the cargo in the market there; and the sole purpose of stopping at the neutral port must merely be to have upon the papers of the vessel an ostensible neutral terminus for the voyage.

"If, on the other hand, the object of stopping at the neutral port be to trans-ship the cargo to another vessel to be transported to a port of the enemy, while the vessel in which it was brought from England does not proceed to the port of the enemy, there is equally an absence of all lawful neutral commerce at the neutral port; and the only commerce carried on in the case is that of the transportation of the contraband cargo from the English port to the port of the enemy, as was intended when it left the English port. This court holds that, in all such cases, the transportation or voyage of the contraband goods is to be considered as a unit, from the port of lading to the port of delivery in the enemy's country; that if. any part of such voyage or transportation be unlawful, it is unlawful throughout; and that the vessel and her cargo are subject to capture; as well before arriving at the first neutral port at which she touches after her departure from England, as on the voyage or transportation by sea from such neutral port to the port of the enemy.

"There must, therefore, be a decree condemning both vessel and cargo." 1

SECTION 49.-VISIT AND SEARCH.

THE "MARIA."

A vessel sailing under convoy of an armed ship for the purpose of avoiding visitation and search is liable to condemnation.

This was the leading case of a fleet of Swedish merchantmen, carrying pitch, tar, hemp, deals, and iron, to several ports of France,

1 Cases involving the same principles, are the Springbok, 5 Wallace, 1; The Peterhoff, 5 Wallace, 28, and others. The judgment of BETTS, J., in the Stephen Hart was subsequently briefly affirmed by the Supreme Court, and it (BETTS' judgment) is on the whole the clearest and most forcible statement of the principles and the circumstances involved in these cases, to be found in the reports.

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