The development of dutch law 67 conservation of the goods, to the same obligations as Innkeepers would have as bailees. They were only liberated by cas fortuit (accident) or force majeure. With this construction the concept of the receptum entered in the codified law, also in ours. Though an intermediate draft of 1822 still had the due diligence-principle of the Republican days (though mitigated by a reversal of the burden of proof in favour of the cargo-interests), ultimately the receptum concept nestled in the Commercial Code. Ultimately indeed: because Sect. 91 in its final text reads (and even right now in 1981!): ‘The carriers by road (voerlieden) and by inland waters (schippers) guarantee all damages to the merchandise which they took over for transport, unless caused by inherent defect, force majeure or fault or negligence of the shipper.’ In the first version of Sect. 345 Comm. Code, which gave the rule for the ocean-carrier’s lability, this rule, likewise, originally was absent, but it was inserted in the ultimate stage of the draft, after the Preparatory Committee asked the Government why there should be a discrepancy between Sect. 91 (for carriers on the road and on inland waters) and Sect. 345, and the Government’s argument “that the principle could be deducted from the nature of the matter” was apparently not accepted by the Committee. Thus, both for inland carriage by road and by water, as well for oceancarriage, the principle was clearly put in words: the carrier is liable unless he is able to prove one of the tripartite exonerating causes: inherent defect, force majeure or fault of the cargo-interestparty. This tripartite exception is typical of European, Code-based carriage lawand permeates as leading principle in many varieties ultimately in the International Convention on Railroad-carriage (Bern, 1890) and taken over in the Geneva Convention for Road-Carriage of 1956. Quoting professor Schadee upon whose work I will dwell later on, in his paper for the Sjörettsföreningen here in Göteborg in 1973: “The carrier’s obligation to deliver the goods as he received them is based upon the theory of the receptum—he who received something in his custody, is not only bound to exercise due diligence to deliver it safe and sound, but from the fact alone of not delivering it safe and sound, follows eo ipso his liability for all damage. His obligation is an ‘obligation de résultat', not an 'obligation de moyens\ That is to say that it is not for the cargo to prove that by the carrier’s negligence the goods did not arrive safe and sound but the burden is on the carrier to prove his innocence.” It is not in words very different from this modern explanation, that Kist, the leading commentator on Commercial Law of the 19th century, set out the principle (V, 1889, 147; III, 138), In this view Kist with reason considered the section following Sect. 345, which held the master ressponsible
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