THE WHITE WHALE 367 
attached to the whale at the time of the seizure. Wherefore the plain- 
tiffs now sued for the recovery of the value of their whale, line, har- 
poons, and boat. 
Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; Lord Ellenborough was 
the judge. In the course of the defence, the witty Erskine went on to 
illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con. case, wherein a 
gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife’s viciousness, had at 
last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in the course of years, 
repenting of that step, he instituted an action to recover possession of 
her. He then proceeded to say that, though the gentleman had origi- 
nally harpooned the lady, and at once had her fast, and only by reason 
of the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last abandoned her ; 
yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish ; and therefore 
when a subsequent gentleman reharpooned her, the lady then became 
that subsequent gentleman’s property, along with whatever harpoon 
might have been found sticking in her. 
How in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the 
whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other. 
These pleadings, and the counter-pleadings, being duly heard, the 
very learned judge in set terms decided, to wit, — That as for the boat, 
he awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to 
save their lives; hut that with regard to the controverted whale har- 
poons, and line, they belonged to the defendants ; the whale, because it 
was a Loose-Fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons and 
line because when the fish jnade off with them, it (the fish) acquired a 
property in those articles ; and hence anybody who afterwards took the 
fish had a right to them. How the plaintiffs afterwards took the fish ; 
ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs. 
A common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge 
might possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the 
matter, the two great principles laid down the twin whaling laws 
previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in 
the above cited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, 
I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human juris- 
prudence ; for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture, the 
Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the Philistines, has but two 
props to stand on. 
