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was proved and found to have happened by the act of God, for which nothing but a clear and express undertaking can make a party liable to answer. But, taking the words to be of doubtful signification, they must be construed according to the reason of the thing, and the nature of the contract [414] in which they are used. It is a contract of affreightment that the parties have entered into. The freight is a compensation for the use of the ship, and not a premium for the insurance of the merchandize. But to make the ship owners answer for goods damaged by storm, is to make them insurers of the cargo against the perils of the sea. This is evidently repugnant to the nature of the contract, and the intention of the parties, and therefore a construction that would produce such an effect, ought not to be adopted if the words will admit of any other. In the clause relative to the valuation of lost or damaged goods, the words were so general that it might have been contended that they imposed this unreasonable burthen on the ship-owners. The clause now in question appears to have been therefore introduced in order to controul the former general expressions, and to restrain the responsibility of the owners to those cases, in which only, agreeable to the nature of a contract of affreightment, they ought to be responsible. But according to the construction put on the clause by the plaintiffs in error, it was wholly nugatory, and might as well be struck out of the charter party. For, if ship damage be construed to mean every possible damage that can happen to goods on board a ship, the owners are in no better situation than if this clause had never been introduced. Yet it is manifest, that it was intended to operate in their favour by confining their responsibility to the case of ship damage, "any thing in the charter party contained to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding." This necessarily supposes, that the goods on board might sustain other damage than ship damage; and for such other damage the owners, notwithstanding any general words before used, were not to answer. That the point in question had been decided by the Court of King's Bench, in the case of Sir Richard Hotham, v. the East India Company, Douglas, 259. where it was held, that a damage happening by storm, was not ship damage, within the meaning of this charter party.

After hearing counsel on this writ of error, the following question was put to the Judges, "Whether by the charter party, the defendant in error was liable to make satisfaction to the plaintiffs in error, for damage done to goods on board the ship by storms in the voyage therein mentioned?" and the Lord Chief Baron having delivered the unanimous opinion of the Judges in the negative; it was thereupon ordered and adjudged, that the judgment of the Court of King's Bench should be affirmed, and that the record should be remitted, etc. (MS. Jour. sub anno 1788. p. 768.)

Henry Lord Coleraine died on the 10th of August 1749, seised of the reversion in fee of divers manors and lands in the counties of Middlesex, Norfolk, and Cambridge, of about £3000 a-year, expectant on the determination of particular estates created by his Lordship's marriage settlement, of the 8th of January 1717, all