Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/223

GENERAL AVERAGE. 195 ter might be supposed to direct the proceedings when only the single ship was in danger, but not when adjoining property was to be protected. In the Ralli case the municipal companies are said to act in all cases by virtue of their public authority. If this is sound, and I think it is, every case in which fire companies have been employed and general average adjudged is an authority in favor of my contention. I cannot close this discussion, long as it has been, without con- sidering two points which are relied on in the decisions here reviewed. Mr. Justice Field, in a passage of his opinion which is quoted with approval in the majority opinion in Ralli v. Troup, says : '* The distinction between a fire put out by the authority of the master, or other person in command, and one put out by public authority is, we think, sound. When a ship has been brought to a wharf, so far as it had become subject to municipal control, if that control is exercised, we think that it stands no differently from any other property within the municipality over which the same control has been exercised ; and that the general maritime law does not cover the reciprocal right and objections of the parties to the mari- time adventure so far as the consequences of this control are con- cerned, but that they are to be determined by municipal law. " By municipal law is here meant the law of things on land. I must confess my inability to follow this reasoning. That because there is no general average for damage to a house, there should be none for damage to a ship, if both are damaged by fire companies, does not seem to follow, any more than the converse, — that if a fire in a warehouse were extinguished by the fire-pumps of a ship, there should be a contribution. In the opinion of the Supreme Court a new point is introduced : That the sole object of the sacrifice must be the common good of the particular adventure ; and therefore, if the fire companies acted, or may be supposed to have acted, in part with a view to saving the spread of the fire to other property, there can be no claim for general average. If so, owners must be careful to instruct their masters not to indulge in any altruistic feelings in such cases. No point is better settled in the law, both civil and criminal, than that if the legal character of an act depends upon the motive with which it was done, and that motive is found to have existed, the case is made out, no matter how many other motives may