by Thomas Baty

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tribunals, situate, possibly, in remote territories (g); and it is of no use to blink the fact that national prejudice and other motives do weigh with their Judges in some cases (h). Neutral merchants will not be satisfied with knowing that the Prize Courts of belligerents cannot in these delicate cases fairly condemn them on mere suspicion. They will suspect that suspicion will too often, in the eyes of the Prize Judge, wear the mask of proof. Nothing short of the absolute immunity of their ships, except in the simple cases already well recognized, will satisfy their legitimate demands. If we turn from principle to authority, the rule has hitherto been clear, that nothing short of a voyage to a hostile port is sufficient to enable a vessel to be captured. This is, to go no further than English cases, expressly decided in the case of The Imina, and again in the case of Ifobbs v. TLenning (i). In the case of The Imina (k) there arose a curiously complicated question of blockade and contraband. The ship was cleared from her starting- point, laden with alleged contraband for a blockaded port. She was proceeding (as her papers showed) from Dantzio, in Prussia, to Amsterdam. But, hearing that Amsterdam was blockaded, she changed her course towards the neutral and unblockaded port of Emden, and was captured by a British cruiser. It was held by Sir W. Scott that in that case she was neither attempting to break the blockade, nor carrying contraband to the enemy. And the memorable words were used :— " This is a claim for a ship taken at the time of sailing for Emden, a neutral port; a destination on which, if it is regarded as the real destination, no question of contraband could arise, inasmuch as goods going to a neutral port cannot come under the description of contraband, all goo...