INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. wij 
of Prize to consider himself as stationed here to 
administer with indifference that justice which the Law 
of Nations holds cut without distinction to independent 
States, some happening to be neutral and some belli- 
gerent. But it went further than Lord Stowell was 
prepared to go in a later decision,® for it definitely told 
both the Government of this country and the whole 
world that there was sitting in the Capital of an Empire 
engaged in a life-and-death struggle a Court free from 
the control of the Executive, constituted by the terms 
of its Commission to administer justice in accordance 
with the Law of Nations, and that in ascertaining what 
that law was the Court would inform itself, as Courts 
of law always do, by hearing counsel and by their own 
researches. Even such an executive act as the means 
of carrying out an Order for Reprisals was to be tested 
by the same impartial means. 
In the course of his judgment Lord Parker stated 
that, * according to International Law, every belligerent 
Power must appoint and submit to the jurisdiction of 
a Prize Court to which any person aggrieved by its acts 
has access and which administers international as opposed 
to municipal law.” This dictum appears to be of too 
sweeping a character. Before 1914 Continental writers, 
such as Bulmerincq, Dupuis, and De Boeck, had shown 
that in most countries the Prize Courts were bound by 
Regulations issued by the Executive Government, and 
only by rules of International Law so far as the latter 
did not conflict with the former. Dr. Colombos, from 
the decisions of the belligerent Courts, and from the 
Prize Regulations of these States during the War of 
8 The Fox, Edwards, 811.