THE AMERICAN ADMIRALTY ITS JURISDICTION AND PRACTICE, WITH PRACTICAL FORMS AND DIRECTIONS. BY ERASTUS C. BENEDICT, LL.D "The worst Civil Code would be one which should be intended for all nations indiscriminately. FOURTH EDITION REVISED BY EDWARD GRENVILLE BENEDICT OF THE NEW YORK BAR ALBANY, N.Y. 12744 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty, by ERASTUS C. BENEDICT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy, by ERASTUS C. BENEDICT, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1894, by in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1910, by In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. CCEAFS PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE practice of the Admiralty Court of this country, notwithstanding the very considerable attention which has been sometimes given to it has been so generally neglected, that, with the exception of a few lawyers in the larger commercial cities, the whole bar make no secret of their ignorance of this branch of legal learning. Having imbibed the English notions on the subject, they have supposed the jurisdiction to be confined to a small class of cases, not worth the labor of learning a new course of proceeding. They do not seem to have adverted to that American view of the subject, which, springing out of the peculiar character of our institutions, considers the jurisdiction of that class of cases as a most important branch of the national sovereignty, given to the General Government for the wisest purposes. Every day gives new cause to admire the profound sagacity, the practical wisdom and forecast of our fathers, in providing for an unknown future, and a territory to be extended indefinitely, under the forms of our double government. In the judicial and commercial grants in the Constitution, that wisdom is especially apparent, at this time, when the Commercial Era, with its new means and its new discoveries, is opening before us a most conspicuous and responsible career among the nations. To me it is quite clear, that those grants, in all the plentitude of their simple and comprehensive phraseology, convey to the General Government only what is necessary to secure the equality and fraternity of the States, and the strength and respectability of the Union. With fifty thousand miles of coast and shore of navigable waters, no one can estimate the extent of our future commerce, or the value to us of a system of commercial law, with its course of procedure, |