would have led to obvious injustice by requiring innocent
American owners to appear before the court to prove the title to their
property.[55] Such a requirement, it was realized, would have led to
difficulties of an almost unsurmountable character under the
circumstances. Claimants would have had to submit evidence showing a
_bona fide_ American citizenship and an actual title to the ownership of
the goods at the time they were seized. Within the rules of prize
jurisdiction the consignee on whose account and at whose expense the
goods were shipped is considered the owner of such goods during the
voyage. And as a corollary the further rule is suggested that the right
to claim damages caused for an illegal seizure would be in the owner. In
the prize court the delay caused by all such questions as between
consignor and consignee would have been almost endless.

[Footnote 55: For. Rel., 1900, p. 579; Choate to Hay, Feb. 2, 1900.]

The question might naturally have arisen whether there could be any
basis for a claim for indirect loss sustained by an American shipper
growing out of the sale on credit to citizens of the Transvaal. It might
be a question, too, whether the consignor might, notwithstanding the
seizures, be able to recover at law the full contract price of the goods
shipped prepaid to the consignee, and if so, whether the seizure could
be considered legally as a wrong against the American consignor. And
even granting that the latter were unable to recover at law from the
consignee, the question would still remain whether under all the
circumstances such inability on the part of the American consignor could
be legally imputable to the act of the British Government in making the
seizure. The question might also have arisen where an agent had bought
for the Transvaal Government on credit, so that the title passed when
the goods went on board and the goods were discovered to have been
contraband, whether an American shipper might not appear to have been
privy to the real character of the purchases. In such a case the United
States Government could hardly have championed the cause of a party who
had shipped contraband. A prize court is filled with pitfalls of the
kind, but the diplomacy of Secretary Hay, backed by the prestige of the
United States and a reciprocal feeling of friendship between the two
nations, was able to avoid all such questions by inducing Great Britain
to agree upon a settlement without compelling