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condemned the Wren' as enemy property. 2. The Supreme Court in reversing that decree decided that the Wren' was not enemy property, but was the property of John Laird, Jr. 3. The garnishees, acting for Prioleau, procured the Supreme Court to make that decision. 4. Prioleau is chargeable with notice of all the proceedings in the Prize Court and in the Supreme Court. 5. The proceeds of the Wren' in the Prize Court were subject to the attachment served upon them in the District Court of Florida at the time when the consent of the libellants' proctor to the dissolution of such attachment was obtained. 6. The decision of the Supreme Court binds the garnishees herein and Prioleau, and is conclusive against them, and cannot be re-examined in this suit. 7. Prioleau is estopped from denying in this suit that John Laird, Jr., was the owner of the Wren,' and of the proceeds thereof when the same were attached herein. 8. The garnishees are estopped from setting up that these funds in their hands are not subject to the attachment in this suit; and also from setting up that John Laird, Jr., was not the owner thereof, or that Prioleau was the owner thereof, when the attachment herein was served."

The Circuit Court declined to make the conclusions of law proposed by the libellants, and made and filed the following conclusions of law: "1. As Prioleau was in fact the owner of the Wren' at the time of her capture, he was in law the owner of the proceeds in the registry of the court after her sale. 2. The sentence of acquittal in the prize cause relieved the fund in court from all claim on the part of the captors, and left the owners free to assert their rights as against the world. 3. The decree in the prize suit did not adjudge the fund to Laird as owner, or deprive Prioleau of his interest. 4. The delivery of the fund to Foster & Thomson, as agents of Laird, placed them in the same situation in respect to it that would have been occupied by Laird if it had been put into his hands instead of theirs. 5. As Laird was not the real, but only the apparent, owner of the fund, he would have taken it, if payment had been made to him, in trust for Prioleau. 6. Foster & Thomson, as his agents, hold it upon the same trust, and are not accountable to the libellants in this action. 7. The decree of the District Court, requiring Foster & Thomson to pay the fund

into court, and subjecting it to the payment of the amount found due the libellants from Laird, was wrong and should be reversed."

The Circuit Court allowed a bill of exceptions tendered by the libellants, in which they excepted to each of its conclusions of law, and to its refusal to make each of the conclusions of law proposed by them.

The libellants appealed from the last decree of the Circuit Court in favor of the garnishees; the garnishees appealed from the earlier decree of that court, dismissing their appeal from the first order of the District Court against them; and the two appeals have been argued together.

In a court of admiralty, as in a court of common law, a process of foreign attachment is auxiliary and incidental to the principal cause. Second Rule of Practice in Admiralty, 3 How. iii. Manro v. Almeida, 10 Wheat. 473; Atkins v. The Disintegrating Company, 18 Wall. 272. Neither the principal defendant nor the garnishees can appeal until after a final decree against them. The first decree against these garnishees, ascertaining their liability, was interlocutory only, and, if the libellants had ultimately failed to recover judgment against the principal defendant and execution against the garnishees, would have been of no avail to the libellants, and of no effect against the garnishees. The appeal of the garnishees from this interlocutory order of the District Court was therefore rightly dismissed by the Circuit Court, and the order of dismissal must be affirmed.

Upon the merits of the case, as presented by the appeal of the libellants from the final decree of the Circuit Court in favor of the garnishees, this court, after full consideration of the elaborate arguments of counsel, is satisfied of the correctness of that decree upon principle and authority.

Prize courts are not instituted to determine civil and private rights, but for the purpose of trying judicially the lawfulness of captures at sea, according to the principles of public international law, with the double object of preventing and redressing wrongful captures, and of justifying the rightful acts of the captors in the eyes of other nations. The ordinary course of proceeding in prize causes is ill adapted to the ascertainment of

controverted titles between individuals. It is wholly different from those which prevail in municipal courts of common law or equity, in the determination of questions of property between man and man.

In Lindo v. Rodney, 2 Doug. 613, 614, Lord Mansfield said: "The end of a prize court is, to suspend the property till condemnation; to punish every sort of misbehavior in the captors; to restore instantly, velis levatis (as the books express it, and as I have often heard Dr. Paul quote), if, upon the most summary examination, there don't appear a sufficient ground; to condemn finally, if the goods really are prize, against everybody, giving everybody a fair opportunity of being heard. A captor may, and must, force every person interested to defend, and every person interested may force him to proceed to condemn, without delay."

From the necessity of the case, and in order to interrupt as little as may be the exercise of the belligerent duties of the captors, or the voyage and trade of the captured vessel if neutral, the proceedings are summary. The libel is filed as soon as possible after the prize has been brought into a port of the government of the captors, and does not contain any allegation as to title, nor even set forth the grounds of condemnation, but simply prays that the vessel may be forfeited to the captors as lawful prize of war. The monition issued and published upon the filing of the libel summons all persons interested to show cause against the condemnation of the property as prize of war, and is returnable within a very few days, too short a time to allow of actual notice to or appearance or proof in behalf of owners residing abroad.

The law of nations presumes and requires that in time of war every neutral vessel shall have on board papers showing her character, and shall also have officers and crew able to testify to facts establishing her neutrality. The captors are therefore required immediately to produce to the Prize Court the ship's papers, and her master, or some of her principal officers or crew, to be examined on oath upon standing interrogatories, and without communication with or instruction by counsel. The cause is heard in the first instance upon these proofs, and if they show clear ground for condemnation or for acquittal, no

further proof is ordinarily required or permitted. If the evidence in preparatorio shows no ground for condemnation, and no circumstances of suspicion, the captors will not ordinarily be allowed to introduce further proof, but there must be an acquittal and restitution. The Aline & Fanny, Spinks Prize Cases, 322, and 10 Moo. P. C. C. 491; The Sir William Peel, 5 Wall. 517, 534. When further proof is ordered, it is only from such witnesses and upon such points as the Prize Court may in its discretion think fit.

It is doubtless true, as said by Chief Justice Marshall in the passage cited by these libellants from Jennings v. Carson, 4 Cranch, 2, 23, that "the proceedings of that court are in rem, and their sentences act on the thing itself. They decide who has the right, and they order its delivery to the party having the right. The libellant and the claimant are both actors. They both demand from the court the thing in contest." But the point there adjudged was that, pending the proceedings, the property was in the possession of the court, and not left in the possession of either party, without security; and there is no intimation that a claimant, who proves his right, as against the captors, to have the possession of the vessel restored to him, must also prove his title in the vessel as against other persons not before the court.

The Prize Court will not indeed permit a stranger to dispute he right of the captors, and generally requires a claim to be made by or in behalf of the general owner, and upon oath. But the claimant is required to give evidence of a title to the property, not for the purpose of having that title established by the decree of the Prize Court, but only for the purpose of showing that he is acting in good faith, and is entitled to contest the question of prize or no prize, and to have restitution of possession in case of acquittal. From the necessity of the case, the claim is often put in by the master on behalf of the owner, and it is sufficient if the master's oath is to belief only.

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By the practice prevailing in England at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and for some years before and after, the master often put in a general claim for himself and all others interested, without naming them. The Hendric &

Alida, Marriott, 96, 99, 123; The Prospérité, id. 164; The Jungfre Maria, id. 273, 283. In the report made in 1753 by Sir George Lee, Judge of the Prerogative Court, Dr. Paul, Advocate-General, Sir Dudley Ryder, Attorney-General, and afterwards Chief Justice, and Mr. Murray, Solicitor-General, and afterwards Lord Mansfield, which was embodied in the famous answer to the Prussian Memorial, the only requisite mentioned of a claim of ship or goods is that it "must be supported by the oath of somebody, at least as to belief." 1 Collectanea Juridica, 129, 135. Sir William Scott and Sir John Nicholl, in their letter to Chief Justice Jay when Minister to England in 1794, stating the general principles of proceeding in prize causes in British courts of admiralty, observed that those principles could not be more correctly or succinctly stated than in an extract which they gave from that report, including the passage just quoted; and, in describing the measures which ought to be taken by the neutral claimant, said, "The master, correspondent, or consul applies to a proctor, who prepares a claim, supported by an affidavit of the claimant, stating briefly to whom, as he believes, the ship and goods claimed belong, and that no enemy has any right or interest in them." Wheaton on Captures, 311, 314.

It has often been said by judges of high authority that the claimant has the burden of proving his title to the property. But in the leading cases in which this was said there was but a single claimant, and either, as in The Walsingham Packet, 2 C. Rob. 77, 87, and The Bremen Flugge, 4 id. 90, 92, the words "support his title " were used as equivalent to the general expression "prove the neutrality of the property;" Croudson v. Leonard, 4 Cranch, 434, 437; The Mary, 9 Cranch, 126, 146; Story's note, 1 Wheat. 506; The Amiable Isabella, 6 Wheat. 1, 77; or else the neutral claimant asserted a title in property appearing to have once belonged to an enemy, as in The Rosalie & Betty, 2 C. Rob. 343, 359; The Countess of Lauderdale, 4 id. 283; and The Soglasie, 2 Spinks, 101; s. c. Spinks Prize Cases, 104. And in The Maria, 11 Moo. P. C. C. 271, 286, 287, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, delivering the judgment of himself, Lords Justices Knight Bruce and Turner, Sir Edward Ryan, Sir John Dodson, and Mr. Justice