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128 was set in action which reduced fraud to a system and rendered naught the vigilance of our cruisers. But, in the first place, these frauds were rendered possible not by what I may call the Common Law on the subject of maritime capture, but by our complicated and ill-devised Orders in Council, suspending, limiting and qualifying that Common Law, and ought to have been met by a return to the Common Law and the suspension of the Orders in Council. In the next place, they were rendered possible by the want of elasticity in the rules of evidence adopted in our prize courts, and were to be met by a change in that procedure. For instance, the question raised in our courts was not whether a ship's papers were bonâ fide but whether they were in order, and the point orally investigated was to ascertain whether the master and crew of the captured vessels swore in conformity with the ship's papers, and if that turned out to be the case the