The question might naturally have arisen whether there could be any basis for a claim for indirect loss sustained by an American shipper growing out of the sale on credit to citizens of the Transvaal.  It might be a question, too, whether the consignor might, notwithstanding the seizures, be able to recover at law the full contract price of the goods shipped prepaid to the consignee, and if so, whether the seizure could be considered legally as a wrong against the American consignor.  And even granting that the latter were unable to recover at law from the consignee, the question would still remain whether under all the circumstances such inability on the part of the American consignor could be legally imputable to the act of the British Government in making the seizure.  The question might also have arisen where an agent had bought for the Transvaal Government on credit, so that the title passed when the goods went on board and the goods were discovered to have been contraband, whether an American shipper might not appear to have been privy to the real character of the purchases.  In such a case the United States Government could hardly have championed the cause of a party who had shipped contraband.  A prize court is filled with pitfalls of the kind, but the diplomacy of Secretary Hay, backed by the prestige of the United States and a reciprocal feeling of friendship between the two nations, was able to avoid all such questions by inducing Great Britain to agree upon a settlement without compelling the claimants to go into the prize court.  Although it was pretty well ascertained that no actual contraband in the usual sense of the term had been carried from America by the ships which were seized, difficult questions were thus avoided as between liens and general ownerships which might have arisen had American shippers been compelled to go into court.

It is not a universal rule where the shipper has not been paid for his goods that the property is still in him, so as to constitute him the owner in a prize court, or for the purposes of sale.  By the terms of sale and shipment he may not have retained a lien on the goods.  But in any case as a rule the title of the absolute owner prevails in a prize court over the interests of a lien holder, whatever the equities between consignor and consignee may be.[56] Consequently the policy adopted by Secretary Hay in demanding that Great Britain should settle with all American shippers on an equitable basis without forcing them to take their chances in a prize court was the wisest course that could have been pursued.

[Footnote 56:  The Winnifred, Blatch.  Prize Cases, 2, cited 2 Halleck, International Law, Engl.  Ed. (1893), 392.]