| Notes | Condemned in Sierra Leone, appealed and restored in London. The vessel had bargained for twelve enslaved people at Grand Mesurado and was prevented by the capture alone from taking them on board.
Sir William Scott, High Court of Admiralty:
Upon the first question, whether the right of search exists in time of peace, I have to observe that two principles of public law are generally recognized as fundamental. One is the perfect equality and entire independence of all distinct states… No additional right to the more powerful neighbour. The second is that all nations being equal all have equal right the uninterrupted use of the unappropriated parts of the ocean for their navigation… I can find no authority that gives the right of interruption to the navigation of states in amity upon the high seas, excepting that which the rights of war give to both belligerents against neutrals… The right of visitation being in this present case exercised in time of peace, the question arises, how is it be legalized?
Slave vessel cannot be deemed a pirate… she is the legal property, not of sea-rovers, but of French acknowledged domiciled subjects. She has a French pass, French register, and all proper documents, and is an acknowledged portion of the mercantile marine of that country. If, therefore, the character of a pirate can be impressed upon her, it must be only on the ground of her occupation as a slave trader; no other act of piracy being imputed.
If the right of search in time of war is imported into peach by convention it will be for the prudence of states to regulate by that convention the exercise of the right with all the softening of which it is capable.
Treaties, however, it must be remembered, are perishable things, and their obligations are dissipated by the first hostility. The covenants, however solemn, for the abolition of the trade, or for the exercise of modes of prevention, co-exist only the relations of amity… At the same time it may be hoped, that so long as treaties do exist, and their obligations are sincerely and reciprocally respected, the exercise of a right, which pro tanto converts a state of peace into a state of war, may so conducted as not to excite just irritation. But if it be assume by force, and left at large to operate reciprocally upon the ships of every state (for it must be a right of all against all), without any other limits as to time, place, or mode of inquiry than such as the prudence of particular states, or their individual subjects, may impose, I leave the tragedy contained in this case to illustrate the effects that are likely to arise in the very first stages of the process, without adding to the account what must be considered as a most awful part of it, the perpetual irritation and the universal hostility which are likely to ensue. |
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| Sources | The National Archives, UK, HCA 49/91/1, "Vessels Cargoes and Slaves Proceeded Against in the Court of Vice Admiralty at Sierra Leone," Jun. 1808 - Mar. 1817, f. 1-37; The National Archives, UK, HCA 49/101, "Vessels Cargoes and Slaves Proceeded Against in the Court of Vice Admiralty at Sierra Leone," Jun. 1808 - Mar. 1817, f. 1-37; The National Archives, UK, CO 967/91, "List of Vessels adjudicated at the Court of Vice Admiralty of Sierra Leone having the number of slaves captured and emancipated," 3 Sep. 1809 - 31 Dec. 1825, large document (15 ft. long); Freeman Snow (ed.), Cases and Opinions on International Law (Boston: The Boston Book Company, 1893), 209-212; John Dodson, A Report of the Case of the Louis, Forest, Master (London and Dublin: J. Butterworth & Son, Fleet Street, and J. Cooke, Ormond-Quay, 1817); SlaveVoyages, www.slavevoyages.org (accessed 2020), Voyage ID: 7567. |
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