HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.
![handle is hein.slavery/ssactsengr0429 and id is 1 raw text is: capital and their industry, unmolested by law, to the supply of any such
markets.
Supposing, however, the regulations to contain [263] the fullest and most entire
fulfilment of the engagement of France, both in time and in substance, what possible
application can a prospective regulation of January 1817 have to a transaction of
March in 1816 ?
The counsel, fully sensible of the difficulty, have been obliged to resort, first, to
the conduct of the master, whose studious concealment of his transactions argues,
as they contend, his consciousness of their illegality. That from the fervour which
the agitation of such questions had excited, anything and everything might be
feared in that quarter of the globe is not at all extraordinary ; but the concealment
of the master, if even much greater than it is, would not, under those apprehensions,
or indeed under any apprehensions, prove the existence of a law that did not exist.
They are next driven to the supposition of intermediate edicts, though the French
minister has not thought fit to produce them. I must observe, first, that the pro-
hibition of the introduction of slaves into her colonies would be the first step that
would be taken, or, as they express it, the initiative of any course of regulations ;
and, secondly, that nobody is now to be told that a modern edict which does not
appear cannot be presumed; and that no penal law of any State can bind the
conduct of its subjects, unless it is conveyed to their attention in a way which ex-
cludes the possibility of honest ignorance. Surely, there is no case in which the
maxim, that what does not appear is to be treated in the same way as if it did not
exist, more fully and forcibly applies than one in which they have been demanded
by the person who had a right to demand them, and have been with-[264]-held by
those who had a duty to produce them. The very production of a law professing
to be enacted in the beginning of 1817 is a satisfactory proof that no such law
existed in 1816, the year of this transaction.
It would be going further than the necessities of the present case require me to
do, to say that the evidence now offered does not enable me to assert that the French
law prohibited its subjects from taking any part whatever in this traffic. It is enough
to say, that no law is shewn which can have any bearing upon this transaction.
The usurper's law was dead born ; and if any law existed at the time of this trans-
action, it must be that which permitted the traffic for five years; for the authority of
that law could not be destroyed by the usurpation ; but whether it had existence
or not, the seizor has entirely failed in the task he has undertaken of proving the
existence of a prohibitory law, enacted by the legal Government, which can be
applied to the present transaction, and therefore upon that ground, as well as upon
the other, I think myself called upon to reverse this judgment.
Upon the matter of costs and damages that have been prayed, I must observe
that it is the first case of the kind, and that the question itself is prinw impressionis,
and that upon both grounds it is not the inclination of the Court to inflict such
a censure. If a second case should occur, it will require (in my judgment till
corrected), and undoubtedly shall receive, a different consideration.
[265] REWARD -(Selkrig). March 10, 1818.-Condemnation for breach of
revenue laws by exportation of logwood from Jamaica, though described and
used as dunnage.
[Referred to, In re Dawson, Pattisson v. Bathurst, [1915] 1 Ch. 630.]
(Instance Court.)
This was the case of a British ship, of the burden of 162 tons, the property of
Wentworth Bailey of the island of Jamaica, who, in December 1815, shipped at Port
Royal in Jamaica about ten tons of St. Domingo logwood, and twelve tons of
Jamaica logwood, with which the vessel sailed on the 14th of that month for Annotto
Bay in Jamaica, where she arrived on the 16th, landed a boat full of the logwood,
and shipped forty-three hogsheads and three tierces of sugar, and one hundred and
eleven puncheons of ruin, with which she again sailed from Annotto Bay on the 31st
of December, and arrived the day following at Kingston. The sugar and rum were
then landed; but the market proving unfavourable, the whole of the sugar and
twenty-nine puncheons of the [266] rum were reshipped, the logwood remaining all
the time on board. On the 15th of January 1816, the ship sailed from Port Royal
with a clearance for Norfolk in the United States of America, the clearance containing
THE REWARD
2 DODIS. 268.
1482](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/ssactsengr0429&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)