52 FEDERAL nsromm.
law is therefore to relieve each party from the obligation to "deliver
the cargo or to receive it at the specific place designated in the char-
ter, without any liability for damages by either to the other; and this,
in substance and effect, is a dissolution of the specific contract as a
common-law obligation.
Such was the direct adjudication in the case of Scott v. Libby, 2
Johns. 336, 3 Kent, *223, where the vessel, finding her port of des-
tination blockaded, brought the cargo back to the port of departure.
The obligations of the contract were deemed dissolved, and it was
held that no freight was recoverable, although by the continental law
the freight one way would have been allowed. English text writers
have repeatedly declared this to be sound law, on the ground that a
contract which cannot be performed without running a blockade, and
thus violating the law of nations, cannot be binding. The same opin-
ion is expressed in the recent work of Valroger, (4 Comm. du Code de
Corn. p. 27,§ 1560;) Abb. Shipp. *601; Marsh. Ins. 57; and Sir WM.
Soorr, in the case of The Tntela, 6 C. Bob. 177, infra, so assumed.
But no such ground was stated in the opinion of the court in Scott v.
Libby. A breach of blockade has no other effect by the law of na-
tions than to subject vessel and cargo to condemnation as prize. It
has been viewed, therefore, as a case, not of a strictly illegal act, in
the ordinary sense of illegality, but as a case of conflicting rights;
and if this is sound, it is not clear that the courts of a third power
could logically refuse damages for a breach of a deliberate contract
between its own citizens to run a blockade, where neither its own
municipal law nor its treaty stipulations forbade it; though in the
latter,cases damages would be recoverable. De Wntz v. Hendricks,
2 Bing. 314; Kennett v. Chambers, 14 How. 38. An insurance of
contraband goods by a neutral is, on the grounds above stated, held
valid, (3 Kent, *267; 1 Arn. Ins. 706; 2 Valcn, 127; 1 Emerig.
215; Richardson v. Marine, etc., 6 Mass. 102; Seton v. Low, 1 Johns.
Cas. 1; Barker v. Blakes, 9 East, 292; Letters of Historicus, 138;)
and I see no good reason why an express contract to carry such goods
should not be as valid as a con_tract to insure them. Such seems to
be the effect of the judgment of Lord Wnsrnonr, in the case of E2:
parte Chavasse, 34 Law J. Bankr. 17, 18. See article by J. N. Porn-
. eroy, N. A. Bev. April, 1870, p. 381. On the other hand, if the prin-
ciples of the Geneva award should be so extended as to require a
neutral nation to pay damages for all infractions of the obligations
of strict neutrality through the acts of its subjects,—a liability not yet
recognized, and strenuously opposed by some authors, (see Mr. Pom-
eroy’s article, supra,)-it would be a singular anomaly if the courts
should uphold and enforce contracts which, if performed, might re-
quire their own government to pay damages. Maclachan, (page 578,)
not without reason, regards "the English law on this subject as not
settled in all its relations." But upon a voyage not designed to run
. a blockade a master has no right to expose ship and cargo to seizure