Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/339

 9. HOLDSWORTH: THE LAW MERCHANT 325 division of the High Court. ^ The appeal from the prize court was to the Council,^ and, after 1833, to the Judicial Committee of the Council. We shall see that appeals from the instance court now go to the House of Lords. Appeals from the prize court still go to the Council. ^ It was in fact inevitable that the distinction between the prize and the instance business of the Admiralty should grow more definite with the growing definiteness of the principles of International Law on the one side, and the principles of Admiralty Law as administered in English courts on the other. The court of Admiralty administers, as we have seen, English Admiralty law. Though for historical reasons it resembles in general outline the maritime law of Europe, it is essentially English law.^ The two greatest judges who have sat in a prize court have laid it down that a prize court administers international law. Lord Mansfield said, ^ " by the law of nations and treaties every nation is answerable to the others for all injuries done, by sea or land, or in fresh waters, or in port. Mutual convenience, eternal principles of justice, the wisest regulations of policy, and the consent of nations, have established a system of procedure, a code of law, and a court for the trial of prize. Every country sues in these courts of the others, which are all governed by the same law equally known to each." Lord Stowell said in the case of the Recovery,^ " It is to be recollected that this is a court of the law of nations, though sitting here under the authority of the King of Great Britain. It belongs to other nations as well as to our own ; and, what foreigners have a right to demand from it, is the administration of the Law of Nations simply, and exclusively of the introduction of principles borrowed from our own municipal jurisprudence." It may be that English statutes or orders in Council will compel the judge to depart from these principles.^ But it is these principles which form the basis of the law administered. This is fully » 54, 55 Vict. c. 53 § 4. • Bl. Comm. iii 69, 70; 3, 4 Will. IV. c. 41 §9. » 54, 55 Vict. c. 53 § 4, 3. * Above. • Lindo V. Rodney 616. •6 C. Rob. 348, 349 (1807). » The Fox and Others (18in Edw. 312-314; Phillimore, Inter- national Law (Ed. 1857) iii 535, 541.