respect, a very unfavourable disability upon the British subject; and it was one which, in the situation of this individual, it was extremely difficult, indeed almost impossible, for him to remove. His father lived in England, and he was pursuing his prescribed course to the East Indies, for the military service. She was a little younger, but her father had died in the East Indies, and her mother married again, and no guardian appointed. It would puzzle the person most versed in that most difficult chapter of general law, the conflictus legum, to say how a marriage could be effected in a manner satisfactory to the Dutch requisitions. Under such difficulties as regarded the Dutch law, the marriage naturally enough was not solemnized with any reference to that law, but under a formal license from the British government, and by the administration of an English clergyman, chaplain of the English garrison. The Crown, it is admitted, has the power of altering all the laws of a conquered country. This is an act passing under the authority of the representative of the British crown, and between British subjects only, in which Dutch subjects have no interest whatever. It is to be presumed, that the representative was not acting without the knowledge and permission of his government, if that permission was absolutely necessary to legalize that act. It was not so in my opinion, unless the Dutch law involved such persons in its obligations; for, otherwise, no Dutch law was invaded by the act, though the sanction of the government might be requisite for the mere purposes of order and notoriety. It

is therefore under all these circumstances I am called upon to dissolve a marriage of 25 years' standing, upon a ground of nullity which existed in its formation, though the vinculum has remained untouched by either party during the whole time. I know, that, in strict legal consideration, I am to examine this marriage in the same way, as if it had taken place only yesterday. It is likewise not improbable, that the stability of many marriages may depend upon the fate of this, for doubtless many have taken place in a way very similar. But I know that I must determine it upon principles, and not upon consequences. Authority of former cases there is none, for the decision in Middleton and Jamison turned upon a ground of impeachment, that was directly the reverse of what is attempted in the present case; for the ground there was, that it was a bad marriage under the lex loci to which it had resorted; the ground here is, that it did not resort at all to the lex loci. In my opinion, this marriage (for I desire to be understood as not extending my observations beyond it,-I abstain cautiously from general positions) rests upon solid foundations on the distinct British character of the parties; on their independence of the Dutch law; on the insuperable difficulties of obtaining any marriage conformably to the Dutch law; on the countenance given by British authority, and British ministration, to this British transaction; upon the whole country being under British dominion; and upon the other grounds to which I have adverted. And I therefore dismiss this libel as insufficient, if

prays.

HIGH COURT OF ADMIRALTY,

Nov. 20.

The Carl Johan.-Lord Stowell proceeded to give judgment in this matter. A Swedish vessel, the Carl Johan, was charged with having run down a British vessel called the James, which was totally lost, some of her crew being with difficulty saved, on the 12th September, 1818. Proceedings were commenced immediately by the British owners against those of the Swede, and a judgment obtained against them (certainly under the interposition of all the delay, which either the use or the abuse of the law could supply) on the 26th of November of the last year. By that decree it was found, that the loss in question had not, in fact, been occasioned by virtue of any uncontrollable accident, but by the misconduct and mismanagement of the Swedish vessel; for which her owners were answerable to the extent at which the losses were charged. An appeal was prosecuted; it lingered on in the Court of Appeal, till nearly the time at which the hearing in that court would have taken place. It was then deserted by the parties, dismissed with costs, and the cause remitted to this court. But this court, proceeding upon its former sen tence, referred it to the registrar and merchants to ascertain the amount of the damage. This had been done and their report, as now brought in, was attacked upon the ground that a wrong of compensation had been taken, the registrars and

measure of loss actually sustained by the injured party. This, it was contended, was not the true measure of restitution; for, that the injured party's loss ought to be measured by the value of the ship that had done the injury. Now, to be sure, at first sight this appeared to be a most inapplicable principle; for how could the value of the vessel that had done the injury be any measure, by which to ascertain the extent of injury done to the vessel which had suffered? It had no connexion with it, and it bore no assignable proportion to it. It was putting the matter on the same footing with the "compensation" of ruder times a compensation which, in modern days, bore the name of "deodand." Compensation, however, was that which restored to the sufferer what property he had lost. But how was its value to be ascertained by any property which the other party might appear to possess? In this case they were in no degree commensurate, and far from being correlative with each other, they might be disproportionate in the highest degree. Thus, the value of a collier or a coaster could furnish no measure of the value of a ship which it might encounter, laden with the rich productions of the East, whether these should be precious stones or the precious metals. It was, in truth, but very lately that such a law had been introduced into the maritime jurisprudence of this country. Till within a few years, our laws, like the general maritime laws of Europe, protected ship-owners from liability to damages arising from unavoidable accident, while they

fixed them to the extent of rendering such owners liable for the inability or misconduct of those whom they employed. Several cases had occurred under the ancient rule of law, where this responsibility had been recognised; yet the interests of navigation had not been inefficiently conducted in this country, while the influence of the ancient rule had prevailed; at least not so inefficiently as to call for any alterations, until the statute was passed of the 26th of his late majesty, which discharged the owners of a vessel from all liability for damage or loss occurring to the goods on board of it, beyond the value of the ship, and of the freight accruing upon the voyage. A later statute, the 53rd of his late majesty, protected them to the same extent with respect to any losses or damages, that they might occasion to other ships, or to the goods laden on board of them. A similar regulation, the Court observed, had been made in the maritime law of some of other minor commercial and maritime states. The avowed purpose of it was, to protect the interests of those who were engaged in the mercantile shipping of the state, and to remove the terrors which would otherwise discourage people from embarking in the maritime commerce of a country, in consequence of the indefinite responsibility which the old law attached on them. But the new rule of responsibility was really none at all. Though that word had found its way into the statute, yet to give this law that title was some thing of a misnomer both as to intention and effect. It was a law of protection to the ship-owners,

but framed with a very moderate regard to the compensation to be made for the real injury sustained. It was, as the Court had already observed, no compensation in it. self. It was a measure evidently of policy, and established by countries for the encouragement of their own maritime interests. The results of it were to be vindicated only on the ground, perhaps, that it was a common benefit, and a common burthen to those whom it applied to. The British law operated equally upon all the commercial subjects of the country; and he who was affected by it to-day might be benefited by it to-morrow. If all the commercial states adopted the same law by common consent, it would have the same mutuality to support it. There could be no question as to its relative effect upon each. But it would be the grossest injustice to apply it to other states who had no such mutuality; and who could not apply it against British subjects for any injury which they might have sustained from them. If, therefore, this British statute were applied to foreigners by the legislature of this country, it would be a disgrace, and an enormous act of injustice, which ought not to be imputed to it but upon the strongest evidence of facts, But nothing of this sort was to be presumed upon this statute: for it could not be supposed to be any secret to the British legislature, that foreigners, sustaining an injury of this kind, had a right, under the maritime laws, to full and real compensation; and that for the legislature to say, that foreigners had no such right, would be a gross violation of all justice, and

the Court understood, had transpired against the award made: no protest was affirmed, but the parties suffered the whole to go on in an undisturbed course. When the registrar's report was returned to this court, then, for the first time, the Court was told, that the whole of it proceeded upon a wrong principle; that a different course ought to have been taken; that the owners of the Swedish vessel were prepared to support it by argument, and to illustrate it by decisions. The Court, however, must brush away both the one and the other. They proved nothing but that their's was a mere struggle for time an attempt to save money by a protraction of time. After some farther observations, in which his lordship affirmed the award of six months' interest on the reported value, his lordship added, that he should enter no farther into the parties' objections, but should pronounce for the award of the registrar and merchants, with costs; and he desired to add, that he thought he should not improperly limit the effect of appeal by declaring, that if this case should travel again into the court of Appeal, and afterwards again return hither, he should certainly meet it at its return with that attention to costs which he thought such a suit would merit.

Nov. 27, AND DEC. 4. (Before Lord Stowell, assisted by two Trinity Masters.)

of the 9th of March, 1820, it being then twilight, and there being several stars visible, the smack Princess Charlotte, of the burthen of about 157 tons, on her voyage from Berwick to London, was working up the passage called the Swin, near the mouth of the river, when she perceived on her starboard bow, a brig and a ship coming down upon her. The brig, which proved to be the Adventure, was hailed at the distance of about 200 yards by the Princess Charlotte's people, and though the brig nearly fouled her, yet she passed to windward (at the distance, however, of a few feet only), without occasioning any accident to her. The ship, which was pursuing precisely the same course, and which proved to be the Dundee, Holmes master, of between 300 and 400 tons burthen, unfortunately encountered the Princess Charlotte by running her bowsprit right into her starboard side, under the main chains, in such a manner that the water poured into the smack: five feet water in the hold were found upon sounding. The Dundee, which was going through the water at the rate of five or six knots an hour, carried the Princess Charlotte, whose rigging and mainsail had got entangled among the rigging of the Dundee, for a considerable distance on her bowsprit till it broke; and then the smack went down head-foremost.