&c., shall be arrived at Simon's Bay or Table Bay, both or either, with liberty to call at St. Helena, or elsewhere, upon the said ship, &c., and upon the goods, &c., until the same be there discharged, &c. And it shall be lawful for the said ship, &c., in this voyage to proceed and sail to and touch and stay at any ports or places whatsoever, particularly backwards and forwards, and to and from those under the Portuguese Government, or any port, place, island, or elsewhere on the coast of South America, without being deemed any deviation, and without prejudice to this insurance. The said ship, &c., goods, &c., valued at 15,680l., being upon goods, ship, and freight, separately valued as under. And in case of capture, detention, or seizure, by any power whatever, to pay a total loss upon receiving documents of her being carried into port, and without inquiry into the regularity or irregularity of her proceedings; and with liberty to sell, barter, exchange, load or unload the interest, in part or whole, at the island of St. Catherine, or elsewhere, where, and whatsoever. Touching the adventures and perils, &c. [This part of the policy was in the common form]. At the rate of four guineas per cent., to return three pounds and ten shillings should the ship have arrived, or this risk otherwise have ceased, on or before the 17th of September. In witness, &c." At the bottom of the policy, the goods were valued at 13,3167.; ship at 1,550%; and freight at 8147. The plaintiff's declared as agents of Robertson and Walker, upon a loss by the arrest and restraint of the king's ships. And at the trial before Lord Ellenborough, C. J., at the Sittings after Hilary Term, at Guildhall, it was admitted that the goods were of the value insured, and had been put on board the ship Chesterfield at the Cape of Good Hope. Much of the evidence turned upon the question, whether the object of the voyage were to trade with the Spanish settlements in South America; Spain being then at war with this country? or, whether it were only in contravention of the trading laws of Portugal? But nothing turned upon that point in the case as presented for the consideration of this Court.

It is sufficient to state, that after the cargo had been taken in at the Cape of Good Hope, the ship went from thence, on the 7th of February, 1800, to Benguela, on the coast of Africa, and afterwards to St. Catherine's, on the coast of Brazil, on the 30th of May; then to Rio Janeiro on the 27th of July: staid there upwards of two months, and remained on the coast till the latter end of November, when, on suspicion of illicit trading with the Spanish enemy, she was taken possession of by some of his Majesty's ships of war, and carried again to the Cape, with the original cargo on board, where she was libelled by the captors in the ViceAdmiralty Court there, on which the assured abandoned to the underwriters; and the ship, after being liberated by the sentence of the Court, was sold there, and has since arrived in England, about October, 1802.

Lord Ellenborough, C. J., now delivered the judgment of the Court. "This rule was moved for, secondly, That the policy on this ship and cargo never attached; the adventure on the cargo being by the terms of the policy made to commence from the loading the goods aboard the ship on the coast of Brazil; an event which, as it was contended by the defendant, never happened, inasmuch as the goods were not loaded there, but at the Cape of Good Hope. And it was also contended on the part of the defendant, that the adventure on the ship, being by the terms of the policy made to begin in the same manner with that on the goods, could of course have no commencement, if that on the goods never attached. [After stating the policy as before mentioned, his Lordship proceeded].

"In the course of the argument it seems to have been assumed that some peculiar rules of construction apply to the terms of a policy of assurance which are not equally applicable to the terms of other instruments and in all other cases: it is therefore proper to state upon this head, that the same rule of construction which applies to all other instruments, applies equally to this instrument of a policy of insurance, viz., that it is to be construed according to its sense and

meaning, as collected in the first place from the terms used in it, which terms are themselves to be understood in their plain, ordinary, and popular sense, unless they have generally in respect to the subject-matter, as by the known usage of trade, or the like, acquired a peculiar sense distinct from the popular sense of the same words; or unless the context evidently points out that they must in the particular instance, and in order to effectuate the immediate intention of the parties to that contract, be understood in some other special and peculiar sense. The only difference between policies of assurance, and other instruments in this respect, is, that the greater part of the printed language of them, being invariable and uniform, has acquired from use and practice a known and definite meaning, and that the words superadded in writing (subject indeed always to be governed in point of construction by the language and terms with which they are accompanied) are entitled nevertheless, if there should be any reasonable doubt upon the sense and meaning of the whole, to have a greater effect attributed to them than to the printed words, inasmuch as the written words are the immediate language and terms selected by the parties themselves for the expression of their meaning, and the printed words are a general formula adapted equally to their case and that of all other contracting parties upon similar occasions and subjects.

"As to the second point made in this case, viz., that the policy on the ship and goods never attached: it is asserted on the part of the defendant, that the adventure in question as to its commencement, according to the natural and obvious meaning of the language and terms of the policy, depends upon and is limited by the co-existence and concurrence of three several circumstances, viz., one of place, one of time, and one of event or fact. And first of place, that it is to attach on the coast of Brazil: secondly, of time, that it should attach there after the 17th of September: and thirdly, of event, that the goods should have been then loaden at some port or place on the coast of Brazil. The adventure upon the ship is in terms declared to begin "in the same

manner,” i. e., at the time, and place, and after the happening of the events before described and specified in respect to the cargo. But it is argued on the part of the plaintiffs, that the latter circumstance of event or fact, as I have termed it, does not affect the commencement of this adventure: and that the words 'from the loading thereof aboard the said ship,' are either to be rejected wholly; in which case the policy will stand thus, 'beginning the adventure upon the said goods and merchandises at all, any, or every port and place where and whatsoever on the coast of Brazil,' without regard to the place at which such goods may have been in fact antecedently laden; or that the words, 'from the loading thereof aboard the said ship 'at," are to be understood from the time of the ship's being with the goods laden on board her, or having such her cargo on board her, at the place mentioned in the policy, i. e., in this case, at the coast of Brazil. The objection to the first of these constructions (besides the difficulty of wholly rejecting words having an apparently significant meaning, and referring distinctly to an act to be done at a given place) is stated to be this, that if the cargo insured be understood to be generally a cargo at, or a cargo on board on the coast, and not one actually and originally taken in upon the coast, the policy would in that case cover the risk on two successive cargoes, i. e., on the outward cargo with which the ship should be in a loaded state on the coast after the 17th of September, and the homeward, or that which it should take in there; and that it would not be just towards the underwriter so to construe the words, as to cover thereby in his risk two successive cargoes, when one original cargo only, according to all the ordinary usages of trade and practice of insurance as applied to such form of words must be understood to be meant, in addition to the liberty of sale, barter, and exchange, given by a subsequent part of the policy and further to reject emphatical words, in order to accomplish a construction so much to the apparent disadvantage of the underwriter. And indeed if only one original cargo were meant to be covered, a Brazil cargo appears to have the best

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claim to be considered as that one. For it would be preposterous to consider the policy as meant, in preference to any other one cargo, to cover a cargo taken in at the Cape of Good Hope, and which should remain unprotected as far as this policy is concerned, wherever it should be, till the 17th of September, and from that day, if it were then on the coast of Brazil, should be protected there, and during the course of barter, sale, and exchange at the island of St. Catherine and elsewhere, and during its reconveyance afterwards back to the Cape from which it had originally proceeded. The same objection in a great measure applies to the second construction, which without wholly rejecting the words 'from the loading thereof aboard the said ship,' considers the goods as the subject of insurance when, after the 17th of September, they should be in a loaded state at the coast of Brazil: for this construction would equally exclude the possibility of covering by this policy an homeward cargo taken in at the coast of Brazil to be carried to the Cape, provided the ship should have arrived on the coast of Brazil with an original cargo on board; unless indeed two successive cargoes could be covered by a policy conceived in these terms. But the most natural construction of the words, if the immediate letter of them were less directly applicable to a cargo taken in on the coast, seems to be to make them apply to a cargo to be carried to the terminus ad quem, upon and within the immediate limits of the voyage described in the policy, rather than to a cargo conveyed, as it should seem, in the course of useless circuity from the place from which the ship originally proceeded before the voyage in question had commenced; continuing, except inasmuch as it might be altered by barter, sale, and exchange, on board during the voyage, and to be delivered at the place at which the voyage is at last appointed to terminate. But the question naturally occurs, is there any thing to be found in the policy which assigns to these words a sense, thus apparently different from the ordinary grammatical sense ofthem? And looking, as we are obliged to do, to the policy, and to the policy alone, in order to collect the