136 INHERENT VICE. 



liable as common carriers for the loss of this animal. . . . 

 The question as to their liability may turn on the distinction 

 between accidents which happen by reason of some vice 

 inherent in the animals themselves, or disposition producing 

 unruliness or phrensy, and accidents which are not the result 

 of inherent vice or unruliness of the animals themselves. It 

 comes to much the same thing whether we say that one who 

 carries live animals is not liable in the one event but is liable 

 in the other, or that he is not a common carrier of them at 

 all, because there are some accidents other than those fall- 

 ing Avithin the exception of the act of God and the Queen's 

 enemies, for which he is not responsible. By the expression 

 ' vice,' I do not, of course, mean moral vice in the thing itself 

 or its owner, but only that sort of vice which, by its internal 

 development, tends to the destruction or the injury of the 

 animal or thing to be carried, and which is likely to lead to 

 such a result. If such a course of destruction exists, and 

 produces that result in the course of the journey, the liability 

 of the carrier is necessarily excluded from the contract between 

 the parties, "(a) 



In another case, decided in the same year, the circum- 

 stances were as follows : — A horse, saddled and bridled, was 

 taken to Waterloo Station to be carried to Ewell. It was 

 attempted to be shown that the railway company's servants 

 were guilty of negligence in not tying up the stirrups ; but, 

 as the plaintiff acquiesced in their being allowed to hang 

 down, and there being evidence that that course was usual 

 and proper, the contention Avas abandoned. No accident 

 happened to the train, nor anything likely to alarm the 

 horse, which was one accustomed to travel by rail ; but at 

 the end of the journey it was found to have sustained con- 

 siderable injuries, and an action was brought against the 

 company. The Court held that the defendants were not 

 liable, since it was to be inferred that the injuries resulted 

 from inherent vice of the horse. Bramwell, B., said: "There 



(«) Blouer v. G. W. Ry. Co., 1872, L.R. 7 C.P. 655, 662. 



