Another part was the liability of persons
exercising a public employment for loss or damage, enhanced in
cases of bailment by what remained of the rule in Southcote's
Case. The scheme has given way to more liberal notions; but the
disjecta membra still move.
Lord Mansfield stated his views of public policy in terms [204]
not unlike those used by Chief Justice Holt in Coggs v. Bernard,
but distinctly confines their application to common carriers.
"But there is a further degree of responsibility by the custom of
the realm, that is, by the common law; a carrier is in the nature
of an insurer .... To prevent litigation, collusion, and the
necessity of going into circumstances impossible to be
unravelled, the law presumes against the carrier, unless," &c.
/1/
At the present day it is assumed that the principle is thus
confined, and the discussion is transferred to the question who
are common carriers. It is thus conceded, by implication, that
Lord Holt's rule has been abandoned. But the trouble is, that
with it disappear not only the general system which we have seen
that Lord Holt entertained, but the special reasons repeated by
Lord Mansfield. Those reasons apply to other bailees as well as
to common carriers. Besides, hoymen and masters of ships were not
originally held because they were common carriers, and they were
all three treated as co-ordinate species, even in Coggs v.
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