One piece of advice—I decline to give a view as to what point in the spectrum between these two extremes it fitted into—was that an effort should be made to make general average according to the York-Antwerp Rules 1994 conform to what was described as the principle of general average. It was suggested, for instance, that, in the Rule of Interpretation, the lettered Rules—supposedly embodying the principles—should be made superior, or at least equal in weight to the numbered Rules, characterized as the repository of artificiality; in other words, the present Rule should be reversed. The clear aim of this was to change the character of the York-Antwerp Rules from what it has actually always been, i.e., a series of exceptions to the wider principles of general average, to a series of illustrations of what are taken to be those principles. The fact that any such change to the Rule of Interpretation would render nugatory quite a large number of the existing and indeed proposed numbered Rules eventually became clear, but the suggestion may well have had a positive effect in concentrating the minds of the delegates on the need for their proposed Rules for 1994 to diverge as little as possible from received principle.

As in quite a large number of cases in which an appeal is made to principle, there is some reluctance on the part of the appellant to define precisely what that principle or principles are and what are their essential characteristics. It is relatively easy on such occasions, of course, to say something like, “well they are contained in Rule A” or some such portmanteau definition. I think it may be constructive, however, to identify the principles which underlay the general average institution at the time of its origins, and consider the extent to which they are the same principles as those held up for our admiration today.