Court proceeded to condemn both ships in December, 1744, and appeals were 
taken to the Lords Commissioners for Prize Appeals. 222 
There is no evidence of the reasons upon which the Council order was 
based in these cases, but some light is thrown on the approach of the Lords 
Committee in prize cases by the appeal in Rous v. Hazzard (1750), from 
Rhode Island. Following the outbreak of war with Spain in 1739, appellant 
was commissioned by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts as a privateer, and 
pursuant to this commission the ship Le Paon was seized upon the high seas 
without proper papers. This ship was then libeled in the South Carolina Vice- 
Admiralty Court; whether as prize or as treaty violator or as Navigation Acts 
seizure does not clearly appear. Upon proof of ownership by French subjects 
the libel was dismissed. An action of trespass for wrongful seizure was then 
brought against appellant in the Rhode Island courts, finally resulting in a 
conciliar appeal from a judgment of the Court of Equity for current 
money. 223 Upon argument by common law lawyers before the Committee, 
Chief Justice Lee expressed doubt whether the case was not properly a prize 
cause in the original, and not a seizure under 7 and 8 William 111, c. 22, as urged 
by respondents. Following further argument by civil law lawyers, the Chief 
Justice declared that 
he was entirely satisfied this was a prize cause, that the Court of Admiralty could 
give damages upon unjust seizures, that damages ought to have been prayed here, 
and if the Court had refused them Hassard might have sought his remedy by 
appeal to the Lords Commissioners for hearing appeals in Prize Causes, that this 
matter did not belong to the jurisdiction of the temporal courts, but that prize and 
all its incidents were subject only to the jurisdiction of the Admiralty and that 
an action of trespass did not lye in this case. 224 
Thereupon all three judgments in the Rhode Island courts (Inferior Court 
of Common Pleas, Superior Court, and Court of Equity) were ordered reversed 
225 
The constitutional struggle preceding the American Revolution tended to 
disturb accepted theories as to the force of acts of Parliament in the plantations. 
In 1766 Chief Justice Hutchinson of Massachusetts wrote that he thought 
a tolerable system of law had been settled in the province. Where local laws 
were silent, the laws of England, not merely of the colonization date, but as 
hibit further proceedings, though jurisdiction 
was clear. But the appellants were able to produce 
many precedents of admiralty court condemnations 
of prizes taken in harbors (N.Y. 
State Lib. MS, A 2693). 
222 1 MS Mins. Vice-Adm. Ct. Prof. N.Y., 
1715-46, 158, 168. 
223 Case of Appellant (L.C., Law Div.); PC 
2/99/369. 
224 Endorsed upon Case of Appellant, p. 7 
(L.C., Law Div.). Cf. PC 2/101/511, 542, 543. 
225 PC 2/101/547.