108 01? AL AtiGUMENT OF SIR CffARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. i». 



Sir CiiArwLES Uussell. — T tliiuk there can be little doubt, at least I 

 submit there can be little doubt, that I am now warranted in assuming 

 that the Tribunal, having followed this argument, cannot fail to have 

 arrived at this clear conclusion: that these vessels were seized for a 

 supposed breach of a nuinicipal Statute, that the men were imprisoned 

 by the judgment of the Court, and that the confiscation of the vessels 

 seized was part of the penalty attached by the municipal law for this 

 breach. 



Now, I liave a word to say, before I ask the Court's i^erraission to sum 

 up the general conclusions, about the character of the Court itself. It is 

 a municipal Court administering the municipal law, part of which munic- 

 ipal law undoubtedly is, as far as it enters into municipal questions, 

 international law. But a Prize Court is a distinct Court, with distinct 

 functions ; not acting upon municipal law but shutting its eyes to munici- 

 pal law altogether as sucli; deriving its authority, no doubt, from the 

 appointment of the Sovereign Power that has caused the marine capture 

 . . to be effected, but although deriving its authority from that 

 betweVn^ Prize crcation, from the moment that it has created it it ceases 

 nfci'li Courts ^^^^ be a municipal Court. 1 should have thought these 

 things were almost elementary in the subject, but as my 

 learned friend, Mr. Carter, did not appear even to think it necessary to 

 consider what must be the character of an international Court if its 

 decree is to be regarded as a judgment of an international Court, I must 

 call the attention of the Court briefly to some authority upon the subject. 



1 cite the work well-known in England and, I think, not unknown iu 

 America, Manning's "Commentaries on the Law of Nations"; and the 

 edition from which I cite is the one publi.-^.hed in 1875 by Mr. Sheldon 

 Amos, himself a writer of distinction, a member of the Bar and Pro- 

 fessor of Jurisprudence at University College, and Lecturer on Inter- 

 national Law to the Council of Legal Education of the Inns of Court 

 in London; and on page 472 he says: 



Questions of maritime capture are adjudged by Courts specially constituted for 

 that purpose. The form of these t'ourts is different in different countries, but in all 



they are distinct from tlie municipal tribunals of the country and are comniis- 

 850 sioned to decide according to the law of nations, including the engagements 



of treaties where any such exist. 



I need not stop to point out that, as between two countries who have 

 entered into a treaty which gives to the two Powers, parties to the treaty, 

 rights, among others it may be rights of capture, those treaties consti- 

 tute as between those Powers, and as binding upon them, a portion of 

 international law. Ordinarily speaking. Prize Courts have to deal with 

 a state of belligerency; as, for instance, where, in the struggle for mas- 

 tery, one Power seeks to obtain possession of the property and the 

 resources of another, or where one Power seeks to get hold of contra- 

 band of war,'\yhich,if obtainedby its opponent, would be of importance 

 to that opponent in the fight: or, again, questions of seizure for running 

 a blockade — questions, which would arise when the ship was brought 

 into the Prize Court, whether the blockade was effe(;tive, questions 

 whether the blockade had been properly notified, and other questions 

 of that description. Ordinarily, therefore. Prize Courts have to do with 

 a state of belligerency, not exclusively, but the main exception — I will 

 not undertake to say the sole exception, though I know no other — is 

 cases of capture, where quasi-belligerent rights are exercised or exer- 

 cisable under treaty as between particular Powers; thus, for instance, 

 assuming there is a Slave Trade Treaty between the United States of 

 America and Great Britain by which rights of search are conceded to 



