ransaction, and which may perhaps tend to throw some
small degree of light on the general merits of the case.

In the late war, Thomas Pagan was agent for, and part owner of a
privateer called the Industry, which, on the 25th of March, 1783, off
Cape Ann, captured a brigantine called the Thomas, belonging to Mr.
Stephen Hooper, of Newburyport. The brigantine and cargo were libelled
in the Court of Vice-Admiralty in Nova Scotia, and that court ordered
the prize to be restored. An appeal was however moved for by the
captors, and regularly prosecuted in England before the Lords of Appeals
for prize causes, who, in February, 1790, reversed the decree of the
Vice-Admiralty Court of Nova Scotia, and condemned the brigantine and
cargo as good and lawful prize.

In December, 1788, a judgment was obtained by Stephen Hooper in the
Court of Common Pleas for the county of Essex, in Massachusetts, against
Thomas Pagan for three thousand five hundred pounds lawful money, for
money had and received to the plaintiff's use. An appeal was brought
thereon in May, 1789, to the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, held at Ipswich, for the county of Essex, and on the
16th of June, 1789, a verdict was found for Mr. Hooper, and damages were
assessed at three thousand and nine pounds two shillings and ten pence,
which sum is 'for the vessel called the brigantine Thomas, her cargo,
and every article found on board.' After this verdict, and before
entering the judgment, Mr. Pagan moved for a new trial, suggesting that
the verdict was against law; because the merits of the case originated
in a question, whether a certain brigantine called the Thomas, with
her cargo, taken on the high seas by a private ship of war called the
Industry, was prize or no prize, and that the court had no authority
to give judgment in a cause, where the point of a resulting or implied
promise arose upon a question of this sort. The Supreme Judicial Court
refused this motion for a new trial, because it appeared to the court,
that, in order to a legal decision, it is not necessary to inquire
whether this prize and her cargo were prize or no prize, and because
the case did not, in their opinion, involve a question relative to any
matter or thing necessarily consequent upon the capture thereof: it was
therefore considered by the court, that Hooper should receive of Pagan
three thousand and nine pounds two shillings and ten pence, lawful
money, damage