The last point must be stressed. Huber said with regard to his exception: “If the rulers of another people would thereby suffer a serious inconvenience they would not be bound to give effect to such acts and transactions.”166 This was, as we know, interpreted by him very strictly. And so it was by Mansfield. The rulers of England would suffer “a serious inconvenience,” one might think, if duty was not paid on tea. And deliberate avoidance of paying duty on tea was at the root of the transaction. But for Huber, as also for Mansfield, the contract was valid. Nothing could better illustrate Mansfield’s complete adoption of Huber on comity.167 Again, Mansfield’s reasoning is in conflict with the passages quoted from Story.168 Mansfield’s prestige did, of course, play a role in promoting the authority of Huber. This emerges no more clearly than in the Pennsylvania case of Denesbats v. Berquier, a conflicts case on the law relevant to personal property under a will.169 It was argued by the plaintiff that Huber, whose authority was against him, “is spoken of with little respect in. Collec. Jurid. .”170 Of course, then in contrast, for the defendant, Huber was the strongest authority - and Dallas’s translation was cited - though Vattel was also brought in. Counsel for the defendant claimed, really talking about Huber, “The precise question has perhaps never been litigated in England; but the opinions of learned men whose writings are respected by all the world, and are received as authority on this subject as a branch of the laws of nations, are conclusive of the point.”171 One judge, Jasper Yeates, then 166 Sec. 3 167 See C.P. Rodgers, Continental Literature and the Development of the Common Law by the King’s Bench, c. 1750-1800, in Comparative Studies in Continental and Anglo-American Legal History, vol. 2: Courts and the Development of Common Law, ed. V. Piergiovanni (Berlin, 1987), pp. 161ff., at pp. 182ff. 168 But Story approved of the reasoning in this case and he cites Huber in connection with it ( Conflict , pp. 208f.). 169 1 Binn. 336. 170 The reference is toThe Ship Columbus, See WatsonStory, pp. 90ff. 171 P. 342.
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