The preceding review of Stowell as a man and as a judge necessarily concludes with this note of the present authoritative position of the Stowell case law. It suggests, however, one or two further considerations. It is clear that an international Court of Appeal for prize cases is outside the range of possibility. The treatment of ships or goods taken as prize is admittedly a matter for national action in the prize tribunals of the belligerent powers. In England that action is based on a well established body of law administered in a judicial manner-more judicially than in any other European country, because the Court possesses reasoned and recorded precedents to guide it, and pronounces reasoned and recorded judgments. Under such circumstances no necessity exists for an appeal from a national to a non-national Court, an appeal which the experience of the present war shows would, even assuming the procedure to be organized, cause infinite delay and immense practical inconvenience both to neutral subjects and to the British Government. Apart, however, from this important consideration, it is certain that, since the Stowell case law, as administered and applied by Sir Samuel Evans and by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, has been found to form an admirable basis for many modern decisions, no administration could now venture to supersede it, and such supersession is a condition precedent to the work of an international Court of Appeal. An assimilation of the prize law of other European countries to that of Great Britain can in the future only be obtained by the international recognition, as expressions of the law of nations, of particular reasoned British precedents, which have been increased in value and number since the outbreak of the war in August 1914. This is a course which can scarcely be regarded as probable unless it can be accomplished by a diplomatic arrangement. Be that as it may, it is unquestionable, from the experience of the present war, that this country will never consent to part with a body of law which has been so well tested as that which Stowell may be said, for all practical purposes, to have created, and which has continued to be applied impartially in the same spirit of justice as animated the famous jurist who presided over the British Prize Court at the end of the eighteenth and at the commencement of the nineteenth centuries. CHAPTER VIII STOWELL AS JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT THIS book is in the main concerned to give an impression of the personality of Stowell, and to reduce into some form the effect and the manner of his work as judge of the English Prize Court. It would, however, leave an inadequate idea of Stowell's wide judicial powers on the mind of the reader if a short space were not allotted to his achievements as an Admiralty judge. Though the Instance or civil jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court is primarily of limited and technical interest, it possesses also some international importance, for the Admiralty Court adjudicates on disputes between shipowners, underwriters, and mariners of all nations, and in mercantile estimation it stands higher than any other similar tribunal in the world. Just as Stowell's long tenure of office as a judge of the Prize Court enabled him to impress his individuality on English prize law, so the same cause gave him the opportunity of enunciating many important principles of purely maritime law with maritime law with a breadth and lucidity which made them basic factors in the further development of British maritime law. Some only of these great judgments can be referred to in these pages, but a few illustrative examples will establish the place which Stowell holds in the development of English maritime law. It is one thing to decide a particular point, it is another to explain the principles on which the decision rests, and to apply them to facts of the case under discussion, so that the latter may serve as an illustration of an abstract proposition. It was this rare gift which Lord Stowell possessed, and it is conspicuous when some of his most remarkable judgments are examined. It would not be easy to find one which better serves as an example than the decision in 1801, in the case of the Gratitudine.1 The result of that judgment was the creation of the rule of law that the master of a vessel in a foreign port has power to bind the cargo on board by a respondentia bond, in order to obtain money to enable the vessel to prosecute her voyage. That rule has never since been questioned, and until steam, telegraphs, and 13. C. Robinson, p. 240. Some of these examples are substantially reproduced from my book, The Growth of English Law, London, 1913. CHAPTER VIII STOWELL AS JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT THIS book is in the main concerned to give an impression of the personality of Stowell, and to reduce into some form the effect and the manner of his work as judge of the English Prize Court. It would, however, leave an inadequate idea of Stowell's wide judicial powers on the mind of the reader if a short space were not allotted to his achievements as an Admiralty judge. Though the Instance or civil jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court is primarily of limited and technical interest, it possesses also some international importance, for the Admiralty Court adjudicates on disputes between shipowners, underwriters, and mariners of all nations, and in mercantile estimation it stands higher than any other similar tribunal in the world. Just as Stowell's long tenure of office as a judge of the Prize Court enabled him to impress his individuality on English prize law, |