Vi INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
1914-18, shows that, except in the United States of 
America, Prize Courts are, in the main, partly adminis- 
trative and partly judicial bodies (and not, as here and 
in the United States, strictly judicial), and that they 
are, as regards the law they administer, under executive 
control. The Report of the Commission on the Inter- 
national Prize Court Convention at the Hague Conference 
in 1907, while stating that eminent magistrates had made 
declarations asserting the independence of Prize Courts 
of arbitrary orders of the Executive, added: *‘ As a 
matter of fact, the instructions and orders of a Govern- 
ment are presumed by the Courts which it constitutes to 
conform to the Law of Nations, and we find no case 
where a Prize Court has refused to apply an order of its 
Government on the ground that it was contrary to the 
Law of Nations.”” * The Zamora, The Hakan,?> and The 
Proton ® now provide the examples; and in the two latter 
the Prize Court expressly declined to enforce provisions 
of the Declaration of London, which they held were not 
in conformity with International Law; these decisions 
ultimately led the Government to withdraw the Orders 
in Council bringing into operation the Declaration of 
London. Incidentally they showed that in The Hakan 
the rule of the Declaration of London was more severe 
on neutrals than that of English Prize Law in the effect 
of the carriage of contraband by a neutral ship; and in 
The Proton that the rule for determining the enemy 
character of a ship laid down by the Declaration of 
London was contrary to the unbroken practice of the 
British and American Prize Courts, and could not be 
© See post, pp. 18 et seq. 
L Actes et Documents, i., 180. 
2 [1916] P. 266; [1918] A. C. 148. 
89 B. &C. P.C. 107; [19181 A. C. 578. 
“11