destroy it. Just a few months before the Knight case this subject had been carefully considered by the House of Lords itself, and a similar conclusion reached.[1] If, therefore, the inference was unjustifiable in the one case, neither of the greatest tribunals of the world was correct, and the Supreme Court had the justification of the precedent just set by the House of Lords.
The importance of the findings that "the manifest object" was to profit by use, not abuse, by manufacture, not restraint, can be understood when it is remembered that the Chief Justice was professedly writing the opinion "in the light of the common law," and concluding that all that was done was "sanctioned" by it. The great decision upon that law, with which the Chief Justice was of course perfectly familiar, was Oregon vs. Winsor.[2] There, too, an instrumentality had been changed from one owner to another, and the transfer had also been held "sanctioned," "permitted," but why? The answer to this covers the whole subject. Simply because it "had no tendency to destroy the usefulness of the steamer, and did not deprive the country of any industrial agency. The transaction merely transferred the steamer from the employment of one company to that of another, situated and doing business in another State. It involved no * * * cessation or diminution of its business whatever. The presumption is that the arrangement * * * promoted the general interests of commerce. * * * The public was not injured by being deprived of any of the busi-
- ↑ Nordenfelt vs. Maxim, (1894) A. C. 535.
- ↑ 20 Wall 68 (1873).
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