tween our enemies and their colonies was carried on even more securely, than if neutrals had been permitted to conduct it in the most open manner, in a direct and single voyage.

In that case, both the terms of the voyage being hostile, and the papers put on board at the port of shipment, being derived from an enemy, or from agents in the hostile country, the suspicion of a visiting officer would naturally be broad awake; and a strict examination, even though the vessel should be brought into port for the purpose, would, generally speaking, be justifiable and safe. The alleged right of property in a neutral claimant of the cargo, might also, in such a case be examined up to its acquisition in the hostile country, by the light of the evidence found on board. Whereas, in the latter branch of the voyage that has been described, all ordinary means of detecting the property of an enemy under its neutral garb, are as effectually withdrawn, as if the transaction had really begun in a neutral port.

The illegal plan of the voyage itself is very easily concealed during its anterior branch, since the papers then point only to the neutral country, as the ultimate place of destination; and there is not the least necessity for hazarding a disclosure to the master, much less to the crew, that the real intention is different.

With such facilities, it is not strange that this fraudulent practice should have prevailed to a great extent, before it met the attention of our prize tribunals. In fact, though often since incidentally discovered in the course of legal proceedings, it can scarcely ever be detected in the first instance by a captor at sea, so as to be a ground of seizure, unless by an accident such as once brought it to judicial notice.

A ship, with a valuable cargo of sugars from the Havannah, on her passage to Charlestown, the port to which she belonged, was stopped and examined by a British privateer.. As the papers were perfectly clear, and concurred with the master's declaration, in shewing that the cargo was going on account of the American owners to Charlestown, where the voyage was to end, the ship was immediately released.

After a stay of a few days at that port, she sailed again with the same identical cargo, bound apparently to Hamburgh, perhaps, in fact, to Spain; but with an entire new set of papers from the owners and the Custom House, all importing that the cargo, not one package of which had been in fact landed since she left the Havannah, had been taken on board at Charlestown. The fact also was solemnly attested on oath.

Soon after the commencement of this second

part of her voyage, she was again brought to by a British cruizer; and her papers, aided by the master's asseverations, would doubtless have induced a second dismissal, but for one aukward coincidence. It happened that the visiting cruizer, was the very same privateer by which she had been boarded on her voyage from the Havannah; and whose commander was able to recognize and identify both her and her cargo, as those he had lately examined.

This case came by appeal before the lords. commissioners; who finding the above facts clear and undisputed, thought them a sufficient ground for condemning the property. They held that the touching at a neutral port, merely for the purpose of colourably commencing a new voyage, and thereby eluding the restrictive rule of law, in a branch of it not relaxed by the royal instructions, could not legalize the transaction; but that it ought nevertheless to be considered as a direct and continuous voyage from the hostile colony to Europe, and consequently illegal *.

In this case, the detection being full and conclusive, it would have been in vain for the claimants to contend that there had been an actual importation into America, with an intention to land

* Case of the Mercury, Roberts, at the Cockpit, July 28, 1800, and Jan. 13, 1802.

and sell the cargo. But other cases occurred, wherein the evidence taken in the prize court, brought to light less circumstantially the fact, that the captured cargoes, though ostensibly shipped in America, had been previously brought in the same bottoms, and on account of the same persons, from Spain, or a Spanish colony; and in these cases an explanation was offered by the American claimants, to which the court of admiralty, and the lords commissioners, in their great indulgence, thought proper to listen. It was alleged, that the importations into America were genuine, and were made with a view to the sale of the cargoes in that country; but that in consequence of a fall of price in the markets, the importers found themselves unable to sell without loss; and therefore were obliged, contrary to their original design, to re-export the cargoes, and send them to Europe or the West Indies, according to the now acknowledged destinations.

An excuse like this, had it been offered even in the first instance, with a gratuitous disclosure of the anterior branch of the transaction, might reasonably have been received with diffidence ; especially when it was considered, that the goods composing these cargoes, were of a kind not generally consumed in America, and such as could be in com. on demand there only for the purpose of re-exportation to that very country, to which

they were now actually proceeding. Such is notoriously the case, in respect of the sugars of the Havannah, and also in respect of the plantation stores, and supplies usually sent to the foreign West Indies from Europe, of which these cargoes were chiefly composed; and it was evidently very unnatural, that a merchant, found in actual connection both with the hostile colonies, and with the hostile or prohibited port in Europe, as an importer from the one, and an exporter to the other, should have been driven unintentionally, and by necessity alone, into that very convenient and profitable course of trade, which he was found actually pursuing.

But when the studied suppression of the former branch of the transaction, is taken into the account; and when it is considered that this excuse was commonly brought forward in the last instance, to avert the penal consequences of a discovery accidentally made in the prize court; the pretence must be admitted to have been in the highest degree suspicious, if not absolutely unworthy of credit,

Yet such has been the extreme lenity of those tribunals, of whose severity the enemy and his neutralizing agents have the effrontery to com plain, that these excuses were not rejected as incredible; and the claimants were indulged, when necessary, with time to establish them in point of fact, by further proofs from America.