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![handle is hein.slavery/ssactsengr0502 and id is 1 raw text is: 294
THREE SLAVES
2 AGG. 411.
taking and destroying ; and it further provides that such bounty shall be distributed
to and amongst such persons, and in such manner, form, and proportion as His Majesty
by any Order in Council shall direct.
The persons, therefore, to whom the bounty is given are specified by this statute,
and are the same as those partaking in the distribution of head-money ; and it may
be doubted whether the Order in Council could, if it so intended, entirely strip any
classes of persons, so specially described in the Act of Parliament, of all interest in
the grant. The only authority to the contrary is alleged to be contained in the
concluding sentence of the Order, which directs the proceeds of a pirate ship, and the
bounty, to be distributed according to a former order of the 23d of June, 1824,
4 save and except that no flag-officer or other person, not actually present at the
capture or destruction of the pirate vessel, shall be entitled to share in the distribu-
tion of bounty, in respect of the crews of such pirate ships, vessels, or boats ; and
adds that, in all cases where any flag-officer or flag-officers shall be so actually
present, the captain shall take only two-eighths, and the flag-officer or flag-officers
one-eighth. There is, in this Order, an entire omission of any supposition-of
captures by boats, in [411] creeks or shoals, or at any distance from the ship, as
frequently happens, in consequence of local difficulties, and no provision is made for
distribution of the three-eighths to any person but the captain and flag-officer. In
all former practice, those actually on board the King's ship at the taking were
considered as present. The exceptive clause says, perhaps, no more than that no
flag-officer or other person not actually present, that is, not on board the. ship,'shall
share ; whilst those who were considered as actually present before, may be still so
considered according to the rules of the service, and so come within the meaning of
these terms. I feel a difficulty, also, in saying that the exclusive terms No flag-
officer or other person adequately describe the captain, and other component
parts of the ship's company. To exclude them, who had always been admitted
before, seems to require that more distinct and appropriate terms should have.been
uAdd. Looking to these considerations, I am inclined to adhere to the interpretation
which agrees with all general analogy and former practice; and I feel fortified in
such construction, by seeing, as I have before observed, that the words of the Act
of Parliament give this bounty to the officers, and seamen, and others, who shall
have been actually on board His Majesty's ships at the taking or destroying of any
pirate boat ; and, I think, I ought to presume that the Order in Council, in regulating
the distribution, meant to preserve those interests.
Interest of the whole ship's crew established.
[412] THREE SLAVES. July 6, 1832.-Slaves, recently'but not legally transferred
from a son to his mother, removed from Watling's Island to New Providence,
both places being under the same Government, a licence from the governor for
their removal as plantation slaves under 5 G. IV, c. 113, s. 14, having been
refused, and without certificate of registration, and afterwards claimed by the
mother as domestic slaves attending upon the son as part of her family,
condemned.
This was an appeal from the Vice-Admiralty Court of the Bahamas, upon an
information under the 5 G. IV, c. 113, the Slave Abolition Act, for an illegal removal
of two female slaves, and a male infant, from Watling's Island to New Providence,
without licence from the governor, and without a certificate of registration. The
seizure took place in June 1831 ; and the question turned upon the fourteenth,
seventeenth, and forty-second sections of the statute. The Court having -decreed
restitution of the slaves, but that there was probable cause 'of seizure, this appeal
was prosecuted by the Crown.
The King's Advocate in support of the appeal.
Phillimore, contra.
Judgment-Sir Christopher Robinson: This is a perplexing case for a Court of
-Appeal, as it grows out of an obscure transaction between a busy blundering woman,
as hr solicitor describes her, and her son, who was also described in the Court below
as a person, though not quite an idiot, labouring under great imbecility of mind;
,and I presume these considerations have been felt, in some degree, on the part of
,the prosecution, as the proceedings are not for penalties, but only for the condemna-
tion of the slaves, who have been liberated according to the provisions of' the Act](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/ssactsengr0502&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)