thinking that when you find words in an act of Parliament capable of being interpreted so as to make the whole act consistent and intelligible, that is a far more valuable test than a discursive inquiry as to what the policy of the act may be. If you can see that a word is used in one section which is consistent with its interpretation in a fixed sense in that section, and which is consistent with its interpretation in that sense in other sections of the act, (say, in one other section of the act,) it would require a great deal indeed to show you, either from conjecture, or from considerations of policy, or from any consideration except some absurdity or repugnancy, that it should not be accepted in that fixed sense, which I venture to call the natural sense.

I shall presently offer to your lordships an observation or two with regard to the policy of the act, but I dwell for a moment upon the observation that the quality of that "equipping, furnishing, and fitting out" is only material when the intention is in question. When the intention is in question you look to see whether or not the structure of the vessel is such, or the fittings of the vessel, so to speak, are such as to reconcile and make the structure of the ship compatible with the existence of the intention, and I insist that to say the equipment must be an equipment for purposes of war is to confound the quality of the equipment with the purpose of the equipment, and I insist that the objection that the equipment must be a warlike equipment, that is to say, an equipment for the purposes of war, is a disguised repetition of the objection that the ship must be armed besides being equipped.

Now, my lords, granting that an equipment for the purposes of navigation is the equipment contemplated and prohibited by the act, the next question is, What is an equipment for the purpose of navigation? or, otherwise expressed, What, again, is the meaning of these words "equip, furnish, and fit out?" Of course they are not to be construed etymologically. The question is whether they are compatible with the reasonable interpretation assigned to them. Now, my lords, I do not think it is necessary for the purpose of this case or for the purpose of this argument to consider whether or not those words "equip, furnish, or fit out" must be such or are such as relate exclusively to the structure of the vessel, or whether they must be ancillary to an existing vessel or ancillary to the structure of the vessel; I apprehend it is not necessary in any point of view, but I apprehend it is eminently not necessary here, because I should say if that question had to be considered when you have the engines in the vessel, or partly in the vessel, surely that is a furnishing of an existing structure; when you have the cooking apparatus surely that is a fitting. But, however, it is not necessary for my purpose to consider that; it is sufficient for me to consider what is an equipment such as is contemplated by the act.

Now, my lords, I submit to your lordships that any commencement of a vessel, present the intention, is an equipment forbidden by the act. If the words are "flexible," and I thank my learned friend, Mr. Mellish, for the word, it is a very just word to be used; I should say that if, looking at the meaning of the word as it occurs in the seventh and in the eighth sections, and treating it as flexible, if there be any doubt about it, the only way of explaining it is to regard the policy of the act itself. Now, has any reasonable policy been suggested other than that which has been stated on our side already, namely, that the policy of the act was to prevent this country from being made a station of hostilities? I am quite aware that it is suggested as a policy of the act to prevent what Sir Hugh Cairns calls proximate acts of hostility; but as to that being the sole policy of the act, is there anything in the act, or in the history of the act, or in pre-existing events which confines it to that policy? Of course the larger the policy the better for the argument for the Crown; but I ask, is there anything whatever in the act which excludes the notion of its being so applied as to prevent our soil from being made a station for hostilities?

Mr. BARON PIGOTT. You mean the starting point?

Mr. JONES. Call it what you will; I call it the cradle for hostilities.

LORD CHIEF BARON. Call it what it is.

Mr. JONES. Allow me to ask whether it was not intended to prohibit this country from being made the cradle of a naval armament, for such it would be if you allow a ship to be formed. I apprehend that if the object of the act be to prevent any ship being built or made here on our soil, I will not say being made or built here alone; but I say, if the object and the policy of the act be to prevent our country from being made the fulcrum, if you will, or, if I may revert to my illustration, a cradle, in which you may lay the infant navy; unless, I say, you can reasonably show that the purpose of the act is something else, or unless you can advance something to show that the object of the act is not such; unless you can furnish a better argument than seems to have been advanced, or unless you can find some fault in the argument, that the most reasonable construction from all history and from the language of the act, not forgetting the preamble, is to prevent that which will be the cause of irritation to belligerent nations

Mr. BARON CHANNELL. Not "will be;" it is a very important observation: it is "may be." Mr. JONES. What is likely to be, that is. I say, unless you can destroy-and this is

really the pinch of the matter-unless you can suppose some policy to be in the contemplation of the legislature other than that which we assign to it, namely, that the object of the act was to prevent that irritation which not only may be, but which we know is, and which, appealing even to contemporaneous events, we see is the cause of irritation, and which, if you were to go back to the history of the times in which this act was passed, was known to be the cause of irritation; unless, I say, you can destroy that argument, and the probability and the presumption arising from the language of the preamble, and arising from the provisions of the act, and arising from what I venture to call the antecedent probability, what is there to affect the argument arising out of this policy? The act must have had some policy; that policy, so far as it is possible to glean it from the words of the act itself, is consistent with the policy which I assign to it; for may it not, and does not the lending of the use of the soil by a neutral to one of two belligerents (to use the language of the act) "tend to endanger the peace and welfare of this kingdom" by annoying the other belligerent? Would it not tend “to endanger the peace and welfare of this kingdom" if all the yards of Liverpool and Hull, and of all the other great naval towns, were avowedly employed in building vessels not intended to be armed in this country, but merely to be made into sailing vessels to be armed elsewhere, and when armed to be employed in war by the confederates? Allow, for the purpose of the argument, that it is avowed that the contracts between the confederates and the builders in Liverpool, in Hull, and elsewhere, are printed in letters as large as can be employed, and suppose that you know that there are constructing a hundred, or as many vessels as you can choose to suppose, is that a thing not calculated "to endanger the peace and welfare of this kingdom?"

Mr. BARON BRAMWELL. Do you read the act of Parliament with this sort of preamble, Mr. Jones: Whereas certain practices are likely to endanger the peace and welfare of this kingdom by causing foreign nations to make a complaint where by the law of nations they have no right to make a complaint?

Mr. JONES. Where by the comity of nations they have such right.

Mr. BARON BRAMWELL. It is a very dangerous topic, with great respect to you, because although the policy of the act may have been to prohibit something which no foreign nation had a right to complain of because foreign nations are not always reasonable, and therefore it was as well to give them no cause, whether reasonable or unreasonable-yet it is obvious that the policy of the act was to prohibit it in cases where foreign nations had a right to complain; and you then go into questions of international law which I thought the attorney general threw over.

Mr. JONES. International law does not affect my view of the matter. I say the policy of the act was to avoid irritation, and to enable the Crown to observe the comity of nations.

Mr. BARON BRAMWELL. I thought the learned attorney general had gone a long way to show that the reliance placed upon international law upon the other side was an ill-founded one.

Mr. JONES. What I am saying is in perfect keeping with the observations which the attorney general made, that you are to look at things practically. Now I ask your lordships whether it is or is not probable that irritation and annoyance are caused by allowing our ports to be turned into ship-yards for the construction of ships for the confederates? The question is answered by events. You know that it is, and independently of facts, it is surely impossible not to feel that whatever tends to make a belligerent nation look upon us as if we were acting a neutrality merely, not being really neutral, which disposes it to look upon us as only pretended neutrals, must be a source of irritation and annoyance to that nation. If you were to suppose that we have not those great advantages of constitution which we have, if you were to suppose the Crown to be despotic for the moment, there would be no doubt whatever that a belligerent might reasonably complain of a neutral nation allowing all its yards to be used for the purpose of calling into existence vessels which were intended and avowed to be intended to be used against the other belligerent. Nobody would doubt that such conduct would be a breach of comity on the part of the despotic neutral. It is because we possess a constitution which forbids the Crown, except under conditions, to do what a despotic monarch may always do, that this act of Parliament is passed, and was necessary to be passed, in order that by means of it the Crown may be enabled to observe and compel its subjects to observe the comity of the nations. I submit to your lordships that, assuming it to be necessary to resort to the consideration of policy, your lordships will not forget that at least nine-tenths of what has been addressed to your lordships in this case has been to enable you to see that the policy of the act is something different from that which might reasonably be supposed to arise from the language here employed. I ask your lordships if your lordships are satisfied with the argument which has been advanced to you; whether, with that knowledge, and with that narrative of events which has been laid before you, you are satisfied that the policy, and the true policy, of this act, was not to enable the Crown, at its pleasure, to forbid any act which by concession was intended to assist remotely a belligerent? I ask whether there is anything whatever in anything which has been advanced by the other

side, which your lordships can lay hold of, and from which your lordships can see that the policy of this act was not to prohibit that which would irritate, annoy, and vex a friendly nation, and that its object only was to prevent what is called, or what in abstract language is called, "proximate acts of hostility"-an expression which may have a great deal more sense in it than I can see.

If there be any force in the observations which I have addressed to you, your lordships will not fail to observe that this act would be frustrated if you were to allow any species of equipment, at all events amounting to that height of equipment which should make the vessel take the sea-that is to say, which would enable the vessel to be launched. It is not necessary for my purpose to specify or to distinguish the particular amount of equipment which would be necessary, because I submit to your lordships that any equipment, granting the intention, would be sufficient. But surely, so far as this case is concerned, and so far as it is necessary to appeal to the construction of the act for the purposes of this question, your lordships will see you are relieved from difficulty on that point of the case, because in order to construe the act it would not be necessary to go further and give a more abstract definition to it than that an equipment such as would satisfy the words of the act would be such as would enable the vessel to take the This vessel was launched.

sea.

Mr. BARON PIGOTT. Do you mean that after she leaves the builder's yard, then any equipment is within the terms of the act?

Mr. JONES. I say any equipment in the builder's yard which would enable her to be launched must be an equipment within the act; and still more, as my learned friend the attorney general reminds me, such an equipment as would enable her to leave the port.

Mr. BARON CHANNELL. You cannot, in construing an act of Parliament, leave out the words that are found there. We all agree that the statute was intended to strike at the attempt or endeavor. It must be an attempt or endeavor to do that which is the subject-matter of the possible prohibition. May it be read thus: if any person "shall, without the leave and license of her Majesty for that purpose first had and obtained as aforesaid, equip, furnish, fit out, or arm, or shall commence or begin to equip, furnish, or fit out, or arm such ship?"

Mr. JONES. Yes, certainly, my lord, that is how I should venture to read it, because it would, in fact, facilitate the application of the word "attempt;" and I go along with many of the observations which I have heard concerning the attempt.

Now, my lords, I have put before your lordships two propositions. The first of these propositions is that equipment for the purpose of making the offense is only such equipment as is needed for the purposes of navigation, as distinguished from equipment for the purposes of war. My second proposition is that any equipment for the purposes of navigation is sufficient.

Now, my lords, with reference to another point, viz., the extent of the equipment, a point to which great attention was paid at the trial, and which my lord chief baron addressed himself to. I will divide that, if your lordships will allow me, into two parts. 1st, as to whether the vessel must be completed; and 2d, as to whether the vessel must be completed here, that is to say, in this United Kingdom. Now, my lords, it surely cannot be necessary to say much upon the question as to whether the vessel must be completed. The few observations which the attorney general made I should think disposed effectually of any difficulty arising on that head, because the act being expressly for the purpose of prevention, and the procedure under the act being by seizure, it would be an idle thing to say that you must wait until the vessel is actually completed. Moreover, if you are to wait till the completion, when is it completed? when will it be completed? That must always be a question of fact, and no reasonable construction of the act would say that it was intended to be raised by the act. Then, my lords, see this other difficulty: not only would the question of completion be associated with and have to be considered with reference to the other parts of the act, at least with those heads of argument which I have applied myself to, namely, as to the character of the armament and the extent of the equipment, but the difficulty would always arise which my learned friend Mr. Mellish seems to think there is nothing in, namely, the difficulty that if you are to wait until the vessel is equipped, of course, assuming the construction which I assign to the act to be the true one, you necessarily, I will not say evade, but you necessarily infringe and deny the act altogether; that is to say, you frustrate its application altogether; because if it be true that you are to wait until the vessel is completed, the vessel may go out side by side with another vessel loaded with arms, and be completed and armed after it has got out of the limits of the kingdom. When that is put as an evasion it is a fallacy. The way of putting it is not to put it as an evasion, or to inquire whether it is an evasion; but the way to put it is this: Is it possible to suppose, as a question of construction, that the act can have been so framed, or that you can put on the words of the act such a meaning as will enable a thing, so entirely in frustration of its intention, to be effected? It is an argument for the policy of the act not being such as is assigned to it by the other side when it is said that it may be successfully evaded.

Now, my lords, if it is necessary to wait until the vessel is completed, you may do everything which it is confessed when done is an evasion of the act. Mr. Mellish admits you may do this. He says not only may it be completed, but you may sail out (I do not know if those were his words, but that is what he means) with that ship side by side with another ship, and get your armament put on board where it suits you. Well, but if that is so, not only is the act a dead letter, but it must have been intended by the legislature to be a dead letter. And therefore it is that I say that the argument is addressed to the question of the construction of the act; it is making the act absolutely idle.

I now come to the question which the Lord Chief Baron has put, namely, the question of locality, a question which I apprehend is very easily disposed of. Now, as regards the question of locality, I admit that for the purpose of this act you must make out that the thing prohibited is done within the United Kingdom. I answer that in a word. The thing prohibited is any act of equipment. Is it not any act of equipment? Let them answer. The question of whether it is or it is not any act of equipment brings back the question to the preceding question.

Mr. BARON CHANNELL. I did not understand that there was any doubt apon this point. If you are right in your former argument, that all that was done within this country would amount to an equipment, no question arises about where it is done.

Mr. JONES. That is as regards the locality. I thought the Lord Chief Baron suggested to me at first the question of locality.

LORD CHIEF BARON. My object in presenting that was to prevent the intent from being supposed to have any peculiar weight more than any other ingredients. The learned attorney general put it yesterday to me, not for the purpose that was then under discussion, that to deny yourself is nothing, but to deny yourself with the intention of delay is. It is not the mere intent to delay; you may intend to delay as much as you like, but it must be coupled with the act which the act of Parliament pronounces, if done with that intent, to be impolitic. Some of the argument, I shall not specify which it was, seemed to think that the intent was everything and the act nothing.

Mr. JONES. No, I do not say that.

LORD CHIEF BARON. The intent without the act is nothing, as the act without the intent is nothing, and the act and the intent are both of them nothing, unless the thing be done in a port in this country.

Mr. JONES. Clearly so, my lord.

Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL. Done or intended to be done.

Mr. JONES. That is the basis on which I have been addressing your lordships. Now, my lords, what I have addressed to your lordships bears exclusively on the point of misdirection. Now, my lords, as I understand the view which at the trial was taken by my lord, it was that the equipment must be hostile, that is to say, it must be of a warlike character, and that the ship must be completed or intended to be completed here. I humbly submit that that view is one which requires reconsideration. am quite sure that there were very few people in the world, who, at the time when the trial took place, would pronounce themselves to be fully competent to give an opinion upon that question. But I need not dwell upon any consideration of what occurred at the trial. The question here is, What is the opinion of the Lord Chief Baron and the rest of your lordships here now upon this most difficult, most abstruse, and most important question? In fact, I would rather prefer, if it could be so done, that your lordships should not consider the question as a mere question of misdirection, but consider the question as applied to the facts alone, for that is the only fair and reasonable way of doing it. It is idle to say that a learned judge is wrong in the sense of his being perversely wrong, or clearly wrong, when a mass of facts is thrown, as I may say, before the court with which the court has to deal, and which your lordships see a week of argumentation is necessary to illustrate; it is utterly impossible. If any learned judge could deal with it, I am quite sure it would be the Lord Chief Baron; and I am persuaded that very likely the learned attorney general, when he addressed himself to this question, drew, or intended to draw, upon the great experience, upon the great knowledge, and upon the breadth of view which my lord is known to possess, and which it is his custom to apply to cases of very great importance, of which we have many instances in this court. My lords, the question is not a mere question of misdirection. The question is a question of the application of the law to the facts, a great question, and a very important one, and a question which must be decided by reference to very general considerations, and not merely to the question of what occurred in this particular case. The question ought to be looked at as if my lord had reserved the facts for the consideration of the court, it being utterly and absolutely impossible to deal with questions of this kind at nisi prius. The question is the same, I say, as if my lord had reserved it for the consideration of the court, and I am happy to know that, whatever may be the end of this case, it has led to a great amendment of the practice of the court, which I believe is mainly due to the Lord Chief Baron, for I believe to his lordship is due the suggestion of so providing that

future cases may be canvassed before the highest tribunal; so that not only this case, but any case of like importance, may be brought under the consideration of the House of Lords. The public are indebted to your lordships for having made the rule which has had that effect.

LORD CHIEF BARON. I have no doubt that the discussion which has taken place upon this motion for a new trial has been far more advantageous to the thorough understanding of the thing, and that we have been able to get to the very last point of whatever can be argued far more advantageously by a general discussion, than by argument upon the narrow ground which alone could have been presented in a bill of exceptions.

Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL. No doubt your lordship is quite right.

Mr. JONES. And for that I think the attorney general has already intimated that he is very thankful to your lordships.

LORD CHIEF BARON. He need not thank me for it, because I hold that a grievous injustice would be done to me by any one who supposed that my resistance to the bill of exceptions was in the least degree disadvantageous to the Crown. I intended to present the alternative, that it would be better to move for a new trial, and take all the points, as you would get your appeal just as well.

Mr. JONES. Your lordship is so well able to vindicate yourself, that I need not say a word in support of what your lordship has said; but I may point out that your lordship has originated the course of proceeding by which either party, dissatisfied with the judgment of this court, will be enabled to carry his case to the House of Lords, which could not have been done before the rule made by your lordship a few days

ago.

Now, my lords, having regard to the full extent to which this discussion has gone, I believe I have occupied your time more than I ought to have done. But perhaps I may be allowed just to offer a word or two on those American cases, and it shall be only a word or two.

Mr. BARON BRAMWELL. What about Quincy's case?

Mr. JONES. The case of the United States vs. Quincy I regard as an authority for the position which I understand to be conceded by the other side, viz, that the ship need not be armed.

Now, as to the case of the Independencia, allow me here to observe that I really think there is no necessity whatever for making any extended observations upon that case. That case asserts this, that where that is not present which is here present, there is no offense, for the ground of the argument in the case of the Independencia is, that where there is no intention to employ the vessel except such as may be hindered by a contingency, there is, in fact, no direct or immediate intention to offend against the act, the act is not violated by an equipment, or even by an arming. This case amounts to nothing. It is argued, indeed, that because the act has not provided for such a case as the case before the court in the Independencia, therefore the act ought to have no operation in those cases for which it has provided. So far, therefore, as the cases of the Santissima Trinidad and the United States vs. Quincy are concerned, I do not think that I need trouble your lordships with any further observations. I submit to your lordships that there exists in this case that combination of the elements of equipment and intention which constitutes the offense. I trust we have demonstrated that there is that combination, and if there be that combination, it is a combination which is prohibited, and the statute has been violated, so as to entitle the Crown to the ship.

LORD CHIEF BARON. The court will take time to consider its judgment.

IN THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER AT WESTMINSTER-HILARY TERM, 27TH VICTORIA. Present: The Right Hon. the Lord Chief Baron Pollock, Mr. Baron Bramwell, Mr. Baron Channell, Mr. Baron Pigott.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL v. SILLEM AND OTHERS, claiming the vessel Alexandra.

Judgment on motion to make rule nisi for new trial absolute.

MONDAY, January 11, 1864.

LORD CHIEF BARON. This was an information against the ship Alexandra, charging that the defendants, with others, had been guilty of a violation of the foreign enlistment act in respect of that vessel. The ship Alexandra had been built and partly rigged at Liverpool, and had been seized on the 6th of April by an officer of the customs, on the ground of a breach of the seventh section of the statute. The defendants claimed the ship, and pleaded that the ship was not forfeited. The information charged