which she had received on her bows, to discontinue her voyage to Calcutta, and to put into the Spanish port of Almeria. It was competent for the owners of the French vessel to have at once arrested the Scotch vessel by Admiralty process in the port of Almeria for the damages incurred by them as the owners of the Moselle, but under the practice of nations, the Admiralty Courts of Spain could not exercise any penal jurisdiction over the crew of either vessel for neglect of the international rules of navigation, although the collision should have been occasioned by neglect of those rules. This is not a satisfactory state of things as regards the navigation of the high seas, and municipal legislation alone, in the absence of an international concert, cannot avail to control even the most glaring cases of neglect. It has been well observed by a leading London journal (Standard, September 14, 1878), that "if it were not that so large a proportion of the traffic of the world is carried on in vessels amenable to English laws, the necessity of some general and severe Criminal Code of Navigation would have been long ere now recognised by all commercial powers." The same journal also justly remarks-" We cannot but feel the difficulty of creating Courts to which such cases could be referred, without risk of gross injustice on the one hand, and of such acquittals as would scandalise public feeling on the other."

It has been suggested, in an early passage of these observations, that the Admiralty Courts of each country, which exercise at present international jurisdiction in civil suits arising out of cases of collision on the high seas, might properly be empowered by an international concert to exercise criminal jurisdiction in such cases, where some neglect or default in observing the international rules of navigation has been the occasion of the collision. There are, we are aware, difficulties in the way of adopting this suggestion, as the Court of the Admiral, eo nomine, is in many respects an institution on the wane, and in some

countries there are no Admiralty Courts, and no traditions have been preserved of the ancient procedure of the Admiralty. But there is in most ports an international officer, whose jurisdiction, in cases of collision, is a young jurisdiction, the growth of which has been favoured by the daily increasing necessities of international commerce. It is to Consular Courts that, in our opinion, the attention of Governments may be wisely directed with a view to provide a check against the personal impunity which attaches at present to individual negligence in the navigation of steam vessels on the high seas. A scheme for the organization of such Courts must necessarily be of a special character, but it should be borne in mind that the existing Courts of Admiralty exercise in civil suits a jurisdiction which is sui generis, and which is of necessity exceptional to that of the Courts, which administer in each country the law of the land. We are not, we regret to say, in favour of the principle under which the British Parliament has recently extended the operation of the law of England to all foreign vessels navigating the high seas within one marine league of the coast of the United Kingdom or any other part of Her Majesty's dominions (41 & 42 Vict., c. 73). Under the rule of reciprocity, Great Britain must be prepared to concede to other nations the exercise of an analogous jurisdiction in accordance with their own law over British vessels navigating the high seas within a marine league of their respective coasts. Such a result, we venture to think, will not prove acceptable to British shipmasters, nor to British mariners, if there be any weight in the following observations, made alio intuitu, which we extract from the same leading London journal (Standard, September 14, 1878). "If then," it says, "the jurisdiction be entrusted to the Power in the vicinity of whose shores the accident occurred, for once that a foreign culprit is tried in English Courts-confessedly the most just and equitable in the world-ten Englishmen will be brought for trial before

tribunals for which, rightly or wrongly, Englishmen have little respect. We doubt whether, under such conditions, the proceedings even of French, German, or American Admiralty Courts would not be watched with considerable jealousy in this country. We are quite sure that no respect whatever would be paid to the decisions of such tribunals in any South American state, in Mexico, in China, in Turkey, in Russia; and that even those of Italy or Spain would not be regarded as impartial. This is the difficulty, the necessary and inevitable, if not insuperable difficulty, in the way of the realization of Sir Travers Twiss's proposal, and he fails entirely to show how it is to be overcome."

It may be conceded, we think, in answer to this objection, that none other than a mixed tribunal is likely to satisfy objections of this character, but we see no insuperable difficulty in the way of constructing such mixed tribunals on the foundations of the existing consular jurisdiction. It would be necessary, in the first place, that the constitution of the tribunal should not militate against a cardinal principle of international law, that "the defendant should be convened before his own judge." The same principle is embodied as regards suits for torts in the maxim: Actor sequitur forum Rei. This principle will be satisfied by constituting the Consular Court of the defendant's nation the tribunal before which he must be arraigned, if he is charged with any neglect of the rules of navigation, whereby a collision has been brought about with a foreign vessel on the high seas. The Consul, however, of the nation, to which the defendant belongs, ought not to sit alone. He should have the aid of one legal and two nautical assessors, and the Consul of the nation to which the complainant's vessel belongs should be the fourth assessor. This organization differs materially from the organization of the Naval Courts, constituted under the provisions of "The Merchant Shipping Act, 1854," but those Courts were strictly Municipal Courts for the investigation of questions confined to British

interests. The precedent, however, is valuable as regards the jurisdiction confided by Parliament to the consular officer of the Queen in foreign countries. It is unnecessary to cite any authority in favour of the Consul having the assistance of a legal assessor, and with regard to nautical assessors it has been one of the special objects of the Reform effected in the procedure of English Courts of Justice to secure to the High Courts of Appeal at Westminster in nautical matters the power of calling in the aid of one or more assessors specially qualified. Thus, in the case of The Dunkeld, as reported in the Times of February 9, 1876, the question was raised for the first time before the newly constituted Court of Appeal in Admiralty matters, and the discussion is thus reported: "On the opening of the Court it clearly appeared that it turned entirely on a question of navigation, as it was contended that the collision had arisen from wrong steering on one side or the other. Lord Justice James observed that it was a question to be determined by the light of nautical skill and experience; and Lord Justice Mellish observed that, this being so, it would be fitting that this Court should have the assistance of nautical assessors, as the Court below, and as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had. Lord Justice Baggallay further observed that it was expressly provided by the Judicature Act, that the Court ought to have the advantage of such assistance. Counsel on both sides assented, and accordingly the case was adjourned for such purpose." No higher authority can well be cited than the above case in support of the suggestion, that the Consul should properly have the aid of nautical assessors. The suggestion, however, as to the Consul of the complainant's nation being an additional assessor of the Court, does not rest upon the same considerations of fitness, which apply to nautical assessors, namely, by reason of the issue involving questions of nautical skill and experience. It rests, however, on other con

siderations of fitness, namely, by reason of the parties interested in the question being persons of different nationalities. Our ancestors thought it right in the time of our Plantagenet kings, that in trials for felony or misdemeanour in our Common Law Courts, where the party arraigned was a foreigner, he should be allowed to claim a jury de medietate linguæ, so as to ensure that some one or more of the jury should be capable of understanding the language of the witnesses produced for his defence, and for other reasons. of a cognate character. Modern reforms have abolished the jury de medietate linguæ in England, and inquisitions before a jury have long since fallen into desuetude in the Admiralty Courts. We must also admit that the cases in the Plantagenet times are not exactly parallel. But a complaint has been publicly brought against the High Court of Admiralty of England in the present day, that under its procedure, foreign vessels have not an even chance against English vessels in cases of collision. Mr. H. H. Meier, of Bremen, a member of the German Reichstag, and the Chairman of the North German Lloyd's, took occasion at the last Conference of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, to express publicly his dissatisfaction with the present practice of the High Court of Admiralty of England, on the ground that foreign mariners, when examined and cross-examined in Court by means of an interpreter, are at a great disadvantage as compared with witnesses speaking the language, in which the proceedings of the Court itself are conducted. This objection to the fairness of the tribunal may not be practically so serious as it may sound in theory, seeing that the nautical assessors by whom the High Court of Admiralty is usually assisted, are selected from an experienced body of navigators, who are not liable to be misled in their appreciation of nautical facts by the unskilfulness of an interpreter. It is not sufficient, however, that the scales of justice should be evenly balanced in an International Court as a