"There does not appear to us to be anything in either of the bills of lading in the present case tending to show that the contracting parties looked to the law of England, or to any other law than that of the place where the contract was made.

"The bill of lading for the bacon and hams was made and dated at New York, and signed by the ship's agent there. It acknowledges that the goods have been shipped 'in and upon the steamship called Montana, now lying in the port of New York and bound for the port of Liverpool,' and are to be delivered at Liverpool. It contains no indication that the owners of the steamship are English, or that their principal place of business is in England, rather than in this country On the contrary, the only description of the line of steamships, or of the place of business of their owners, is in a memorandum in the margin, as follows: 'Guion Line. United States Mail Steamers. New York: 29 Broadway. Liverpool: 11 Rumford St.' No distinction is made between the places of business at New York and at Liverpool, except that the former is named first. The reservation of liberty, in case of an interruption of the voyage, 'to tranship the goods by any other steamer,' would permit transhipment into a vessel of any other line, English or American. And general average is to be computed, not by any local law or usage, but 'according to York-Antwerp rules,' which are the rules drawn up in 1864 at York in England, and adopted in 1877 at Antwerp in Belgium, at international conferences of representatives of the more important mercantile associations of the United States, as well as of the maritime countries of Europe. Lowndes on General Average (3d ed.), Appendix Q.

"The contract being made at New York, the shipowner having a place of business there, and the shipper being an American, both parties must be presumed to have submitted themselves to the law there prevailing, and to have agreed to its action upon their contract. The contract is a single one, and its principal object, the transportation of the goods, is one continuous act, to begin in the port of New York, to be chiefly performed on the high seas, and to end at the port of Liverpool. The facts that the goods are to be delivered at Liverpool, and the freight and primage, therefore, payable there in sterling currency, do not make the contract an English contract, Or refer to the English law the question of the liability of the carrier for the negligence of the master and crew in the course of the voyage. Peninsular & Oriental Co. vs. Shand, Lloyd vs. Guibert, and Chartered Bank of India vs. Netherlands Steam Navigation Co., before cited.

"There is even less ground for holding the three bills of lading of the cotton to be English contracts. Each of them is made and dated at Nashville, an inland city, and is a through bill of lading over the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and its connections, and by the Williams and Guion Steamship Company, from Nashville to Liverpool; and the whole freight from Nashville to Liverpool is to be 'at the rate of fifty-four pence sterling per 100 lbs. gross weight.' It is stipulated that the liability of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and its connections as common carriers 'terminates on delivery of the goods or property to the steamship company at New York, when the liability of the steamship commences, and not before;' and that 'the property shall be transported from the port of New York to the port of Liverpool by the said steamship company, with liberty to ship by any other steamship or steamship line.' And in the margin is this significant reference to a provision of the statutes of the United States, applicable to the ocean transportation only: 'Attention of shippers is called to the act of Congress of 1851: "Any person or persons shipping oil of vitriol, unslacked lime, inflammable matches [or] gunpowder, in a ship or vessel taking cargo for divers persons on freight, without delivering at the time of shipment a note in writing, expressing the nature and character of such merchandise, to the master, mate or officer, or person in charge of the loading of the ship or vessel, shall forfeit to the United States One Thousand Dollars." ' Act of March 3, 1851, C. 43, § 7; 9 Stat., 636; Rev. Stat., § 4288.

"It was argued that as each bill of lading, drawn up and signed by the carrier and assented to by the shipper, contained a stipulation that the carrier should not be liable for losses by perils of the sea arising from the negligence of its servants, both parties must be presumed to have intended to be bound by that stipulation, and must therefore, the stipulation being void by our law and valid by the law of England, have intended that their contract should be governed by the English law; and one passage in the judgment in Peninsular & Oriental Co. vs. Shand gives some color to the argument. 3 Moore P. C. (N. S.), 291. But the facts of the two cases are quite different in this respect. In that case, effect was given to the law of England, where the contract was made; and both parties were English, and must be held to have known the law of their own country. In this case, the contract was made in this country, between parties one residing and the other doing business here; and the law of England is a foreign law, which the American shipper is not presumed to know. Both parties or either of them may have supposed the stipulation to be valid, or both or either may have known that by our law, as declared by this court, it was void. In either aspect, there is no ground for inferring that the shipper, at least, had any intention, for the purpose of securing its validity, to be governed by a foreign law, which he is not shown, and cannot be presumed, to have had any knowledge of.

"Our conclusion on the principal question in the case may be summed up thus: Each of the bills of lading is an American and not an English contract, and, so far as concerns the obligation to carry the goods in safety, is to be governed by the American law, and not by the law, municipal or maritime, of any other country. By our law, as declared by this court, the stipulation by which the appellant undertook to exempt itself from liability for the negligence of its servants is contrary to public policy and therefore void; and the loss of the goods was a breach of the contract, for which the shipper might maintain a suit against the carrier. This begin so, the fact that the place where the vessel went ashore, in consequence of the negligence of the master and officers in the prosecution of the voyage, was upon the coast of Great Britain, is quite immaterial."