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board, broke over them in a storm, or gradually and imperceptibly made its way to them through some original defect in the ship itself; nor could it be known with more certainty from the condition and appearance of the package, whether the wetting of the goods arose from negligence, in the master, by his improper stowage of them on board, than from either of the two other causes before mentioned. The visible effect and appearance which each of these three several causes, viz. insufficiency of the vessel, storms, or bad stowage, would produce upon the package of goods wetted on board, must necessarily be the same, and of course this criterion as applied to discover from which of these three supposed causes, as distinguished from the rest, the injury arose, must be wholly ineffectual. That the provision in the charter party, that the owners of the ship should not be responsible for any damage that might happen to the homeward-bound cargo from the ship's late dispatch, clearly implied, that without a special provision for the purpose, the owners would, under the other covenants of this charter party, have been liable for such damage. But what damage is so likely to arise to a cargo from the late dispatch of the ship, as that which is immediately occasioned by storms and bad weather? Indeed it is difficult to shew, how the risk arising from original insufficiency in the ship, or the misconduct or negligence of the master, could be in any manner enhanced by the circumstance of late dispatch. The provision in question, therefore, could in fair reason only be applied to such risks as vary with the seasons of the year, and unquestionably none vary so much, if indeed any other vary at all, with the seasons of the year, as what are properly called sea risks, or dangers occasioned by stormy and tempestuous weather at sea.

[413] If it had been the intention of the parties, that the East India Company should stand their own insurers against all sea risks, and that the ship owners should be liable only in case of negligence, it had been already contended, that any express stipulations for that purpose would have been wholly unnecessary; supposing, however, the sense of these provisions to be equivocal, it was more reasonable to infer, that the parties making them intended to alter their relative situations by doing so, than to stand precisely in the same situation in which the law would have placed them, if no such provisions had been ever made. That no arguments could be drawn from the supposed periods of time when, or occasions upon which, the different provisions contained in this charter party were first introduced into it. As between these parties, every part of the instrument began to exist at one and the same precise point of time, and the whole instrument ought to receive such and no other construction than if it was now made for the first time; and as if no one part of this instrument had ever been in fact known to exist in any other instrument of the like sort, either without or prior to the rest of it, all the different clauses of the charter party respecting the same subject, though scattered through different parts of the instrument when drawn together, and collectively considered, form this one plain provision, "That the ship owners shall be answerable for such part of the homeward cargo as shall be found to be prejudiced, wet, or damnified, by any occasion or accident whatever happening on board the said ship, and not occasioned by its late dispatch;" and that no other sense could be put upon the whole, consistent with the particular meaning of each part separately taken.

On the other side it was said (T. Erskine, J. Mingay), that the only question arising on the bill of exception was, Whether damage done to goods by the violence of a storm was to be considered as ship damage, within the meaning of the charter party entered into between the defendant in error and the East India Company?—According to the construction contended for by the plaintiffs in error, the words ship damage, mean all damage happening to the goods while on board the ship, in contradistinction to such as may happen to them on shore. Taking them in this sense, the only effect of the clause containing those words, would be to exempt the owners from responsibility in a case in which they never could have been responsible, viz. that of damage happening to the goods before they were put on board, or after they had been delivered. The defendant in error contended, that the more natural and rational construction was, such damage as is imputable to the insufficiency of the ship, or the neglect of those who have the charge of her, in opposition to damage happening from causes that could not be guarded against by the ship-owners, or those whom they employed. The damage done in this case,