ck in
trade of the Nassau population gave the judges whatever justification
there was for the presumption that the goods were intended to be
transshipped without breaking bulk. A recent English writer, Mr.
Atherley-Jones, who criticises this decision of the Supreme Court of the
United States as a verdict based upon the principle of the expediency of
the moment and not upon the usual rules of evidence, admits that if a
vessel sails with the intention of violating a blockade there is no
question of the character of the port from which she sets out but
insists that there is no necessity in such a case to apply the doctrine
of "continuous voyages," If it can be proved, he says, that she is going
to a blockaded port, it does not matter whether she is going to a
neutral one or not, but it must be made clear that she is going to a
blockaded one. He points to the fact that suspicion can never prove this
apart from the ship's papers, the admission of the ship's company and
the situation and course of the vessel. His view of the case is that the
Supreme Court as well as the lower courts of, the United States
"accepted well founded surmise as to a vessel's destination in lieu of
proof," and he adds, "the danger of such a departure needs no further
comment."[7]

[Footnote 6: Op. cit., p. 45.]

[Footnote 7: Commerce in War (1907), p. 255.]

The first position taken by Great Britain to support her right of
seizure of foodstuffs bound for Delagoa Bay seems to have been based
upon this departure of the Supreme Court of the United States in the
case of the _Springbok_ in 1863. It was found, however, that this basis
of justification would not be acceptable to other Powers generally nor
to the United States when the doctrine of "continuous voyages" was given
such an application as practically to include foodstuffs as contraband.
Without the taint of contraband there could be no justification even
upon the _Springbok_ decision as a precedent, since there was no
blockaded port in question. In the seizure of American goods which were
being conveyed by British ships there was the possibility of a violation
of a municipal regulation which forbade British subjects to trade with
the enemy.

But the charge of trading with the enemy to gain plausible ground
necessarily carried with it the further presumption that the ultimate
intention was that the foodstuffs should reach the Transvaal by a later
stage of the same voyage.

With reference to