Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/310

272 as compensation for the greater risk and care to be taken for the conveyance of the articles. In plain terms, the carrier is not liable unless the sender declares the value and pays the charge for insurance fixed by the carrier, and railway companies give effect to this Act by fixing an ad valorem scale of insurance for the articles named in the Act, this scale being duly advertised in their time tables and by other means.

By an amending Act, passed in 1865, it was enacted that the term "lace" should be construed so as not to include machine-made lace. It should also be mentioned that the Act of 1830 limits the carrier's liability to the declared value of the goods, plus the additional charge for insurance, but does not preclude the carrier from reducing this liability by proving that the declared value exceeds the actual value, if such be the case. Further, as the intention of the Act, as stated in its preamble, was to protect the carrier from the risk of depredation of articles of great value in small compass, it very properly provided that, where such depredation was committed by the servants of the carrier, he should be liable notwithstanding any of the provisions of the Act.

(11.) When railway companies first commenced to carry horses, cattle, sheep, and other live stock, they were in the habit of giving notice to the senders that they were not common carriers of live stock, and that they only conveyed it on the understanding that the owners took the entire risk, and this notice, being printed on the ticket, was held by the courts to be a special contract, and legal and binding upon both parties; but by an Act passed in 1854, entitled, "An act for the better regulation of the traffic in railways and canals,"