Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/309

273 ACTIONS AGAINST TEE PROPERTY OF SOVEREIGNS 273 Courts could scarcely, consistently with the general principles which have guided them, refuse immunity to the ships of foreign nations used in trade. Sovereign authority would shrink to small proportions if not permitted to determine what uses of its prop- erty are pubHc. To inquire into the use of property declared by a foreign sovereign to be public would be to flout the dignity of sov- ereignty which the courts have declared entitled to respect. In The Parlement Beige ^"^ the sovereign's statement covering the public use of his property was regarded as barring inquiry, and in The Exchange ^^ the court refused to question the sovereign's state- ment as to title. Certain recent EngHsh cases have made government use of private property the basis of immunity. The Broadmayne ^^ was an action in rem for salvage services against a ship requisitioned by the English Crown. The requisitioning was a compulsory hiring which left title and possession in the owners. The Court of Appeal made an order forbidding the detention of the ship while under requisition. Swinfen Eady, L. J., speaks of the ship as, "in the service of the Crown, and as such exempt from process of arrest." Pickford, L. J., speaks of "the right of the Crown not to have its prerogative interfered with, and not to have its interest in any way deteriorated." Bankes, L. J., said, "The vessel whilst the requisition lasts, is. . . puUicis usibus destinata, and as such not liable to the claims or demands of private persons." In this case the English court appears to go far toward adopting the principle enunciated by Judge Gray in Briggs v. Light-Boats,^^ the necessities of government. As he there said, "[It] would endanger the performance of the public duties of the sov- ereign ... to submit to the judicial tribunals the control and disposi- tion of his public property, his instruments and means of carrying on the government in war and peace, and the money in his treasury." The case on this basis is a logical extension of previous doctrine. During the period that the state employs and controls private property, that property is in the service of the state and must be treated as assimilated with the public property of the state. " Supra. 38 Supra. "9 [1916] P. D. 64. « II AUen (Mass.) 157, 162 (1865).