consideration, the conveyance of the commodities of others, according to certain agreed-on destinations; or transfers the possession or use of the vessel, for a time, in whole or in part, for a valuable consideration, to others who have goods for exportation or importation; or engages to convey individuals, who wish accommodation as passengers; in other words, to the relative rights and obligations of the parties engaged in the contract of affreightment, in all its shapes, and to the nature of the documents used by them, under that contract; such as charter parties and bills of lading. And here we have not only to examine the legal duties and responsibility of the owners and the master of the vessel, and the counter-obligations of the freighters, or charterer, or owners of the cargo, resulting from the contract of parties, but also the obligations of these parties to each other, arising from the events which take place in the course of the voyage; particularly the equitable doctrines of salvage and average, or contribution for the reparation of a loss incurred for the common safety.

The means of maritime conveyance being thus secured and discussed, the next point of investigation is obviously the exchange of the commodities so conveyed. And here the domestic or inland contract of sale, or exchange for value, in circulating medium, naturally branches out into different sets of transactions, agreeably to the differences in the situations in which the parties are placed. Instead of the single transaction of purchase and sale concluded by the parties, in the presence of each other, in the same place, and at the same time, we have intermediate agents, and a series of transactions all directed to the accomplishment of the same end. We have a commission or order to furnish and ship, an order to purchase and ship, a consignment for sale, and other different intermediate

pieces of business performed by commission merchants, who make advances on the faith of consignments, by mercantile agents, and by brokers.

Having finished the discussion of the principal transactions by which the maritime exchange of commodities is effected, we proceed, in the same natural order, to the consideration of those auxiliary and subservient arrangements by which maritime commerce may be rendered more safe for the individual, by which its extent may be enlarged, and by which its operations may be facilitated.

In the infancy of navigation and maritime commerce, the perils of the winds and waves behoved to be more felt than in the more advanced stages of its improvement. And yet ages passed away before it was perceived that, from this multiplicity of risks, safety and profit might be made to arise; that, by a small contribution or deduction from profit, an individual might secure reparation for loss occasioned by the dangers of the sea; and that, by undertaking to repair a number of such contingent eventual losses, another individual might, upon the average of physical events, reap a profit. This arrangement, indeed, appears to have been preceded, if not introduced, by the practice of lending money on the security of the vessel and cargo, at a high rate of interest, corresponding to the maritime risks to which they were to be exposed in the course of the voyage, and which the lender undertook to bear. But, as soon as the more simple arrangement just alluded to was diɛcovered, its obviously beneficial effects in practice could not fail to hasten its progress; and, accordingly, in none of the maritime contracts have we more reports of cases decided in courts of law than in this highly useful one of maritime insurance.

Even in a comparatively rude age, the scarcity of moveable capital, and the difficulty of mercantile opera

tions on an extended scale, behoved to suggest to individuals that obvious expedient by which the capital, as well as the skill and industry, of several individuals are combined and directed to one common object. The advantage of such an arrangement must have been more sensibly felt as maritime commerce became more extended and multifarious; and, accordingly, the contract of copartnership, or joint trade and adventure, thus forms a very important branch of mercantile jurisprudence.

In the same way, in early times, the scarcity of moveable capital, and the necessity felt by the individual trader of supporting his mercantile credit by the aid of others, onerous or gratuitous, naturally led, not merely to loans of cash on the ship and cargo, at marine risk and at marine interest, or a sort of joint adventure, but also to advances in cash on the mortgage or temporary transferance of the property of the vessel in security at ordinary interest, or on the deposit of merchandise, or on mere personal security, such as the mutual accommodation afforded by mercantile guarantees; all of which arrangements may be ranked along with copartnership, as the other means, though less important, resorted to for the extension of trade.

In the progress of commercial intercourse among individuals of the same country or nation, the utility, or rather the necessity, of an established standard of value, and of one common medium of exchange, could not fail, in time, to lead to the adoption of some natural or artificial production which, from its intrinsic qualities, was well adapted for that purpose. From the use of such a circulating medium, possessing intrinsic value, the advantage of a transition to a less cumbrous and costly instrument of exchange came to be perceived; and, instead of precious metals, there came to be substituted, to a great extent, an artificial representative of value,

possessing no intrinsic estimable qualities, and deriving all its worth from conventional arrangement. But if the adoption of such a medium of exchange was advantageous among the inhabitants of one state or country possessing one common coin or current money, a similar plan was still more necessary and expedient between the subjects of different states, and the inhabitants of different countries, who possessed no such common coin or current money. And hence bills of exchange, by which value in the currency of one country is, by the intervention of a written document, set off against value in the currency of another country, and the operations of maritime commerce thereby so greatly facilitated.

In carrying on the various transactions of maritime commerce, thus briefly described, various questions arise; and the reciprocal rights and obligations of parties require to be determined and defined by fixed regulations. For this purpose, and for the enforcement of these rights and obligations, certain courts of law have been established in all countries where commerce has made any considerable progress. In some countries, this power and function have been wholly vested in separate and peculiar courts, such as courts of admiralty, or of maritime jurisdiction, and judges of commerce. In other countries, this power and function have been vested partly in such peculiar courts, partly in the common-law courts of the state; and the constitution and mode of procedure of these judicial establishments thus form the other grand division of this department

of law.

CHAPTER III.

CCUMULATIO

OF THE GROWTH OR ACCUMULATION, OR OF THE ORIGIN OR DEVELOPMENT, OF THE LAW OF MARITIME COMMERCE, AND OF ITS GENERAL OR COMMON NATURE, AND PECULIAR SUSCEPTIBILITY OF IMPROVEMENT.

SUCH seem shortly to be the leading doctrines of the law of maritime commerce, as a branch of the Internal law of a nation; and, before proceeding to trace in detail the history of this interesting department of jurisprudence, we shall first inquire, generally, how it arises and is gradually formed and accumulated, and whether there be anything peculiar in its nature, such as to render it pre-eminently susceptible of improvement from

extraneous sources.

The multifarious traffic which individuals and nations maintain with each other, has manifestly its origin and foundation in the physical constitution of man and in the external circumstances in which he is placed. Formed with various wants and capacities of enjoyment, mankind are made dependant on external circumstances for their subsistence and for the various comforts and conveniences of life. And, by the wise arrangement which the Author of the Universe has established on the face of this globe-by the unequal distribution which he has made, not merely in the external means of subsistence and enjoyment, but also in the powers of rendering external objects more subservient to the purposes of life-mankind are likewise made dependant on each other; and, in order to supply their reciprocal wants, are impelled, by necessity and selfinterest, not merely to cultivate the earth and to manu