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- GIFT MAY 18 '51 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1894, by in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 101432 TO HON. CHARLES L. BENEDICT, DISTRICT JUDGE OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, WHOSE DECISIONS ON ALL BRANCHES OF ADMIRALTY LAW, DURING TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF JUDICIAL SERVICE, HAVE GIVEN HIM HIGH RANK AMONG THE ADMIRALTY JUDGES OF THE UNITED STATES, I DEDICATE, WITH FRATERNAL AFFECTION, THE THIRD EDITION OF THE AMERICAN ADMIRALTY. ROBERT D. BENEDICT. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE Practice of the Admiralty Courts of this country, notwithstanding the increased attention which has been recently given to it, has been still so much neglected, that, with the exception of a few lawyers in the commercial cities, the bar make no secret of their ignorance of this branch of legal learning. Having imbibed the English notions on the subject, many 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 admiralty jurisdiction as an extensive and important branch of the national sovereignty, conferred exclusively upon the courts of the United States for the wisest purposes. Every day has given new cause to admire the profound sagacity, the practical wisdom, and the forecast of our fathers, in providing for an unknown future, and for a territory to be extended indefinitely, under the forms of our peculiar 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, has opened before us a most conspicuous and responsible career among the nations. To me it is quite clear, that those grants, in all the plenitude of their simple and comprehensive phraseology, convey to the general government only what is necessary to secure the equality and fraternity of the States as between themselves, and the strength and respectability of the nation. With fifty thousand miles of coasts and shores of navigable waters, no one can estimate the extent of our future commerce, nor the value to us of a system of admiralty and |