petition should state why the same object could not be obtained under general statutes; that in the case of a railway or canal the route should be approximately set forth with the particulars; that if other persons than the petitioners were interested they should have sixty days' notice, besides publication in a newspaper, and that no claim for the payment of money out of the treasury should be received except by petition setting forth the particulars, with a report from the controller-general of the State that he had examined and approved it.

After these general observations, let us pass to some details. The catalogue of our needs is a long one, not only because there is so much to be done, but because there is so much to be undone. There is time now to mention only a few of the more pressing, and for illustration I will take up the statute book of 1886. This I do the more readily because one brauch of the Legislature of that year is still in power, and because furthermore the legislation it gave us was an improvement upon many of its predecessors. The session began on the 5th of January and lasted until the 20th of May, a period of 136 days. The cost of the session was a little over half a million of dollars. Six hundred and eighty-one statutes were enacted; so that each statute, one with another, cost $734. The first thing that strikes the reader is that 274 of these 681 statutes are entitled as acts to amend former statutes, and that 54 took effect without the assent of the governor. The same general subject is dealt with in different statutes. There are 26 for canal appropriations, 43 for appropriations to other objects, 69 out of 681 being for appropriations of public money, and costing altogether if we take one statute with another, $50,000-that is to say, it cost the State $50,000 for the Legislature to say how the taxes laid upon the people should be expended. To an outsider it does not clearly appear why these appropriations could not have been all included in one act. Apart from these statutes there are few of general importance, and some of them could have been grouped into one, to the relief of the legislator and the convenience of the citizen. Thus there are twenty acts to amend the Code of Civil Procedure, twelve for the New York City Consolidation act, six for the Code of Criminal Procedure, six for the Penal Code; five different acts relate to taxation, four to the power of boards of supervisors; 239 are classified in the general index as relating to corporations, 143 as relating to the city of New York, and sixty to the city of Brooklyn. Of the last two classes, some are placed also in other classes. There are ninety-three classed as relating to villages, 101 to cities other than New York and Brooklyn. Some of those relating to cities and villages are enacted as complete charters, for example, that of fhe city of Jamestown, extending through more than forty pages of the statute book; that amending the charter of the village of Oneida, covering eighteen pages; that for consolidating the laws relating to the village of Canton, sixteen pages, the three together being more than half as long as the proposed Civil Code.

Chapters 329 and 633 relate to the public health and might advantageously have been brought together into one act; chapter 445, for legalizing the acts of notaries public, might well have been made general, to include acts of other officials in like circumstances; chapter 261, to protect the lives of the people of Brooklyn in the running of elevators, might have been extended to the whole State, unless the lives of Brooklyn people are more precious or less cared for than the lives of other citizens. The general acts relating to corporations might be counted on one's fingers-one of them, chapter 98, relating to religious corporations; two, chapters 333 and 564, relating to corporations in

general; two, 551 and 601, relating to railway corporations, and one, 546, to enable certain corporations to appoint policemen.

There are not a few curiosities in the volume. Eighty-four mistakes are noted by the apologetic words "so in the original;" chapter 97, an act entitled "an act trelease to John Hoefler" purports to release to John Hoefter. Chapter 588, to provide for public or legislative printing, enacts that the secretary of State, attorney-general and controller shall furnish forms for bids, in which they are to be ad dressed as the "Honorable." Chapter 676 is entitled an act to amend a certain other act entitled "an act to consolide with an act," etc. One statute, chapter 260, is entitled "an act to legalize, ratify and confirm the vote taken at a special village meeting held in the village of Geneseo, Livingston county, April 1, 1886, for the purpose of raising the sum of $1,000 to purchase a clock for the use of said village and provide a place for the same, and to authorize the trustees of said village to borrow money and issue bonds therefor." This act cost the State, taking the average cost of a statute, $734. One act, chapter 443, does not give, either in its title or its contents read by themselves, the least idea what it is for, except that it relates to a police department somewhere in the State. Here is the title: "An act to amend title 12 of chapter 77 of the laws of 1870, entitled 'The Police Department,' as amended by chapter 495 of the laws of 1873, and chapter 298 of the laws of 1885."

Some of the acts are worthy of special mention; for instance, chapter 488, to provide for uniform policies of fire insurance; chapter 60, for calling a convention to revise the Constitution; chapter 65, to secure com. pensation for the grant of a railway franchise in the streets of cities and villages; chapter 151 and 409, in relation to the hours of labor; chapter 410, to establish a board of arbitration between employer and employed; chapters 268, 271 and 310, relating to the dissolution of a railway corporation, and the winding up of dissolved corporations; chapter 316, to restrain the debt-increasing tendency of counties, towns, cities and villages; chapter 352, for a "commission to inquire into the most humane and practical method known to modern science in carrying into effect the sentence of death;" chapter 560, to confirm the boundary between New York and Pennsylvania; chapter 572, relating to acts of municipal bodies, and chapter 366, providing for the draining of wet lands.

Now if the different chapters which relate to the same subject had been brought together into one statute, and the special acts had been superseded by general statutes, and the local acts had been relegated to local authorities, the number of statutes in the statute book of 1886 would have been reduced by more than two-thirds, and the length of the session proportionately lessened. All important work could have been as well done, debates could have been shorter, the labors of committees could have been diminished. Such, I am persuaded, is the true way of diminishing the burden of legislation, for burden it unquestionably is upon both the constituent and the representative. I would diminish it, not by making the sessions less frequent, but by diminishing the work to be done and thus making them shorter. Annual elections are among our fundamental ideas of free government. Until lately they were the universal practice. Every colonial government had them. History teaches us that the best security for free institutions is frequent recurrence to the people. They are the repositories of all power; their will is the guide of all public men; it is clear therefore that they should be frequently consulted, and once a year is not too often. A poor compliment it is to our skill in the

construction of a government of the people that we should lessen the occasions of consulting them. Diminish the work that the Legislature has to do; that is the true remedy for excessive legislation, instead of diminishing the opportunities for doing it. That were a strange inconsistency, which should pretend in one breath that the people are the most fit to rule, and in the next, that the opportunities for them to act should be lessened. Consult the people at least once a year, but consult them only on such matters as concern them; consult the wishes of the whole people upon that which concerns the whole; but leave the local concerns of the different portions of the State having separate interests to those whose concerns they especially are.

This however is a digression from our main subject, and I return to that, mentioning at the outset certain matters of form, in respect of which, as they appear to me, beneficial changes might be made:

First. Mistakes in the engrossing of bills might be in great part avoided by printing, engrossing by machinery, as a lieutenant-governor presiding in the Senate once ruled. A mistake in print is for obvious reasons sooner detected than a mistake in manuscript, and one correct copy insures the correctness of the rest. Such I believe is now the practice in the British Parliament.*

Next. Those rules of procedure, which have been carefully framed in order to prevent undue haste in the passing of bills, are commonly set aside, suspended, the process is called, near the close of a session, the very time when they are most needed. That master of a ship would be thought insane, who coming from fair weather and smooth seas upon a lee shore and seeing a heavy gale rising, should let his sails run loose, call off his lookout, and throw away his cables and anchors. What would befall him is easy to tell.

Third. There should be a standing committee on language to which all bills should be referred for examination and correction in respect of expression, following the example of the Federal convention, when the Constitution of the United States was framed. Or what would be still better, special counsel should be appointed for the Legislature, as suggested by the governor in his last message.

Fourth. The time when a bill becomes a law, by the signature of the governor, should be noted in the statute book by the word "approved" instead of "passed" as now. The latter word is inappropriate, for we never say that an act is passed by the governor. Bills passed by Congress take effect on the approval of the President, and the time when that is given stands in the statute book as the time when the bill becomes a law.

Fifth. All general statutes should be published in pamphlet form immediately upon the lapse of the thirty days allowed the governor after the adjournment of the Legislature for the approval of bills left over. Such is the practice in some of our sister

Since this address was delivered I have received the following from the clerk of the House of Commons:

January 10, 1887.

SIR-I gladly undertake the answer to a question passed on to me by Mr. Baden-Powell relating to the parliamentary practice regarding the engrossment of acts of Parliament. Your opinion that engrossment has been superseded is quite correct.

Since 1849 authenticated vellum prints of the statutes have been substituted for the engrossment rolls of former days, and these documents are stored aloft in the Victoria Tower. Believe me to be your obedient servant, REGINALD F. D. PALGRAVE, The Hon. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD.

States, as for instance Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Sixth. I cannot leave this question of form without mentioning the anomalous practice of publishing among the statutes resolutions of boards of supervisors for dividing townships or changing their boundaries. Thus you may see in the present volume a resolution of the supervisors of Suffolk for establishing the boundary between Riverhead and Brookhaven, numbered as chapter 682, closing the acts passed by the two Houses of the Legislature and approved by the governor. The least that can be said of a classification so grotesque, is that it is a remarkable display of poverty of invention.

Let me now pass to some general observations, respecting the substance of legislation.

The ninth section of the eighth article of the Constitution is, as we all know, in these words: "It shall be the duty of the Legislature to provide for the organization of cities and incorporated villages, and to restrict their power of taxation, assessment, borrowing money, contracting debts and loaning their credit, so as to prevent abuses in assessments, and in contracting debt by such municipal corporations." This constitution took effect with the beginning of 1847. At the end of that year the debt of the city of New York, not counting revenue bonds issued in anticipation of taxes, was a little less than twelve and a half millions; it is now nearly eighty-five millions. The population of the city was then less than half a million; it is now a million and a half, so that the debt has increased in a ratio more than twice that of the population. This is the severest commentary that can be written. No general law has been enacted 'for the government of cities. Such a law would not be difficult to frame, and would be most useful if enacted. We should not then have as we have now a book of 518 pages for the government of the city of New York alone, nor a separate charter for Brooklyn, another for Buffalo, still another for Syracuse,and so on,a different one for every different city. The evil of these various charters is great; they are more difficult to frame, more difficult to learn, more difficult to execute, than one comprehensive scheme which should establish not one rule for New York and another for Brooklyn, but one for all cities and all citizens. We had lately a conspicuous instance of the burdens we assume and the risks we run when we make different sets of laws upon similar subjects; the indictment of an alderman had to run the gauntlet of the courts before it could be settled whether for a particular offense he was to be judged by the Penal Code or the Consolidation Act. For the incorporation and government of villages a general law has been enacted, but that did not prevent a special charter for Oueida in the session of 1886.

Like observations might be made respecting that other provision of the Constitution, which authorizes the Legislature to "confer upon the boards of supervisors of the several counties of the State such further powers of local legislation and administration as they shall from time to time prescribe." We have counties which exceed in the population some of the States of the Union. To say nothing of the county of New York, which has a larger population than any one of twenty-eight of our States, the county of Kings has a larger population than any New England State excepting Massachusetts. These counties could govern themselves better than the State can govern them, in matters of mere local concern. A distribution of functions which should give to them increased powerr both of legislation and administration would be a benefit to them and a relief to the rest of the State, while it would be a measure in consonance with the

theory of American institutions. It would not be difficult to frame a scheme of county government, adequate to all the needs of the county.

From these general observations I will go on to some particulars of much needed and most pressing legislation. I do not mention all, because the catalogue is too long. I confine myself to six. The first and greatest of all is the lessening of delay and uncertainty in the administration of justice. These amount to a public scandal. The uncertainty may be measared by the number of reversals on appeal, as they appear in the reports of the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. The delay in civil cases is told by a distinguished member of the Albany bar, who stated in a communication to the American Bar Association that the average length of a defended law suit, from its beginning to its end in the court of last resort, could not be much less than five years. The delay in criminal cases is given in a report made within the last month by the board of police justices in the city of New York, showing that the accumulation of untried cases in the Court of General Sessions is not less than 9,000. Here is an extract from this report:

"During the past year 6,096 cases were sent to this court from the police courts, and fifty cases by transfer from the Court of Special Sessions, making 6,146 cases in all. Of this number 2,943 were felonies and 3,203 were misdemeanors. Some other cases reach this court through the action of the grand jury in the first instance, but they are few. A very large number of the cases sent to this court for trial, including many grave offenses of felony, as well as the lighter offenses of misdemeanor, are never tried nor even considered. They are bail cases, and it is a generally recognized fact among practitioners in the court, and conceded by the district attorney, that there is no time for the trial of these unless it be some case of unusual gravity or importance, or one in which the public manifest exceptional interest, as in some recent instances. It is not an unusual occurrence for a trial in this court to occupy more than a week's time and in a case concluded a few days ago the trial was prolonged for five weeks. Trials which occupy the time of the court for a day or two days are of frequent occurrence. These facts demonstrate that great diligence by the court is required to dispose of the prison cases alone, and bail cases must be pushed aside to wait a more favorable opportunity, which never arrives."

The following is a quotation from a previous report:

"It frequently happens that such offenders, while at large upon bail, are arrested for the commission of other or similar offenses, and in one instance, at least, the same offender has been arraigned and given bail for trial at the General Sessions for no less than six repetitions of the same offense before the trial for the first offense was had."

Is this delay necessary, is this uncertainty necessary? If not, why do they continue?

The next most pressing need is to put an end to the abuse of injunctions. A preliminary injunction is a useful, indeed it is often a necessary process for the prevention of injustice, but its use exceeds any thing contemplated when the first Code of Procedure was framed, and it has expanded at last into an enormous abuse, which requires the most vigorous treatment. If considered as a question of principle, it does indeed seem inconsistent with our notions of personal liberty that there should be a public officer, one of whose functions it is to arrest with the stroke of the pen the most important operations of trade, of finance, the fulfillment of contracts, and personal movements, and all these without first hearing the persons enjoined. Nothing can excuse this encroachment upon liberty, but the necessity sometimes of keeping things as they

are, for a short period, until an investigation can be bad. The necessity however is the limit of the right, and whatever judge, under whatever circumstances, arrests the movement of parties, before trial and judg ment, a moment longer thau is absolutely necessary, does a grievous wrong. The evil is patent, the injury is great, and the abuse is allowed to continue year after year. Ample remedies have been proposed, only to be disregarded.

Another subject which I find many unwilling to talk about, but which I think should be talked about and agitated, until a change is made, is the assessment of election expenses, or rather I should say assessment in the name and under the pretense of election expenses, which is made upon the candidates for judicial office. I have no knowledge on the subject, no information beyond that which is conveyed by the newspapers or borne by rumor, but I am led to believe that large sums have been sometimes extorted from judicial candidates to defray what are called election expenses, which I take it means subsidies to politicians, to be disbursed by them as seems to them good. The effect of all this upon the judicial office, and upon the rights of suitors, any man can discern with his eyes shut. The remedy should be quick and searching. It should be made a misdemeanor for a candidate for judicial office to contribute, directly or indirectly, to election expenses or to any political fund, and if discovered at any time during his office, should the candidate be elected, it should forfeit his place.

Another subject of no small importance is the condition of our law of corporations. Confusion reigns here, beyond that which reigns in so many of our laws, which is saying a great deal. We have several different ways of creating corporations, and as many different ways of managing them when created. There are many thousands of them to be regulated. To say that there is any uniformity or system would be to provoke a smile. Why cannot we have uniformity? Why cannot we have simplicity?

Still another pressing need is the improvement of tenement houses. The governor has called the attention of the Legislature to this subject in his last message. I will add a few extracts from a description of one of these tenements, taken from a new York paper of last July. The tenement is in Mott and Elizabeth streets, is called the Big Flat, and is said to be "not half so bad as many other tenements in the precinct." What it is may be judged by the following extracts: "It comprises Irish, Germans, Spaniards, Cubans, Swedes, Italians, Russians, Huns, Poles, Japanese, Chinese and Turks." ** *"The bare brick walls rising for some six stories from the sidewalk, the dirty mattresses hanging from the windows, the meagre faces of men, women and children, leaning out to catch a breath of free air all give it an air of poverty, degradation and crime." * "All through the halls * washerwomen were busy with their tubs, children were crawling and running about, all more or less filthy and sickly in appearance." "In the next room entered, upon a wretched bed a young boy lay dying of consumption. A little child was crawling upon the floor, hideously deformed for want of proper medical care. At a washtub in the hallway a young woman was washing industriously in an endeavor to earn enough for this little family."* *There are ninety-one apartments in the Big Flat and 271 rooms. In these between twelve and fifteen hundred men, women and children make their homes."

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This subject of tenement houses leads, by a natural association of ideas, to the condition of destitute children. There are said to be 12,000 homeless ones under twelve years of age in the city of New York alone, 7,000 of whom have no shelter whatever, ignorant in

the morning where to rest their little heads at night, and the other 5,000 having shelters, if shelters they may be called, too foul for human beings. What are these 12,000 children likely to come to as they grow up? Most of them can be saved from becoming a burden and a menace to the rest of the community if they are looked after in time. The Children's Aid Society, an institution which has done a world of good, and cannot be too highly commended, tells us that $20 for each of these children would give them all comfortable homes in the west. Who can see the wasteful expenditure going on all the time with public money and not begrudge a little of it for this army of waifs, now a formidable menace, but capable of being made an army of workers beside industrious and honest people?

It may perhaps be thought that there is inconsistency between my opposition to the meddlesome theory of government and my advocacy of care by the State for tenement houses and destitute children, but I think there is none. The regulation of these houses and the saving of these children are really measures of protection for ourselves, of a like kind with measures for protection against malarial fevers and contagious diseases. Surely we can distinguish between defending our own rights and assailing] the rights of others. The distinction is plain enough.

Gentlemen, you of this association by your influence, and you of this Legislature by your power, can do us an immensity of good and save us from an immensity of evil. I have heard that Horatio Seymour, one of the most thoughtful of our statesmen, said that for its influence and opportunity of distinction he should prefer a place in the Assembly to any other in the State. Was he not right? Here is the place for a tribune of the people, not to thwart patricians as did the tribunes of old, for here are no patricians to be thwarted, but to stand up for the right and withstand the wrong. The laws here made and the words here spoken affect directly the largest political community in the Union, and indirectly, by force of example, not a few of the rest. May they be worthy! Give us leave to live unharmed by the ruffians who scatter pestilence, poverty and crime around us, or lay upon us burdens grievous to be borne, or eat out our substance, or sell our birthright or entrench themselves in privilege. We want an administration of justice as sure and speedy as human effort can attain; we want wise, equal and efficient laws, and we want withal that freedom to be and to do all that God in his providence has offered to human beings, so long as we refrain from invading the equal rights of others. Let us then be up and doing, not postponing to the morrow what we can do to-day, and remembering that "the mill never grinds with the water that is past."

WAITE, C. J. This is a suit in rem begun in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on the 25th of February, 1882, against the steamer Harrisburg, by the widow and child of Silas E. Rickards, deceased, to recover damages for his death, caused by the negligence of the steamer in a collision with the schooner Marietta Tilton, on the 16th of May, 1877, about 100 yards from the Cross Rip light-ship, in a sound of the sea embraced between the coast of Massachusetts and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, parts of the State of Massachusetts. The steamer was engaged at the time of the collision in the coasting trade, and belonged to the port of Philadelphia, where she was duly enrolled according to the laws of the United States. The deceased was first officer of the schooner, and a resident of Delaware, where the widow and child also resided when the suit was begun.

The statutes of Pennsylvania in force at the time of the collision provided that "whenever death shall be occasioned by unlawful violence or negligence, and no suit for damages be brough by the party injured during his or her life," "the husband, widow, chiidren or parents of the deceased, and no other relative," "may maintain an action for and recover damages for the death thus occasioned." "The action shall be brought within one year after the death, and not thereafter." Brightly Purd. Dig. (11th ed.) 1267, §§ 3-5; Act April 15, 1851, § 18; Act April 6, 1855, §§ 1, 2. By a statute of Massachusetts relating to railroad corporations, it was provided, that "if by reason of the negligence or carelessness of a corporation, or of the unfitness or gross negligence of its servants or agents while engaged in its business, the life of any person, being in the exercise of due diligence, * * is lost, the corporation shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand nor less than five hundred dollars, to be recovered by indictment, and paid to the executor or administrator for the use of the widow

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and children. * * * Indictments against córporations for the loss of life shall be prosecuted within one year from the injury causing death." Gen. Stats. Mass. 1860, ch. 63, $$ 97-99; Stat. 1874, ch. 372, § 163.

No innocent parties had acquired rights to or in the steamer between the date of the collision and the bringing of the suit.

Upon this state of facts the Circuit Court gave judgment against the steamer in the sum of $5,100, for the following reasons: "(1) In the admiralty courts of the United States the death of a human being upon the high seas, or waters navigable from the sea, caused by negligence, may be complained of as an injury, and the wrong redressed, under the general maritime law. (2) The right of the libellants does not depend upon the statute law of either the State of Massachusetts.or Pennsylvania, and the limitation of one year in the statutes of these States does not bar this proceeding. (3) Although an action in the State courts of either Massachusetts or Pennsylvania would be barred by the limitation expressed in the statutes of those States, the admiralty is not bound thereby, and in this case will not follow the period of limitation therein provided and prescribed. The drowning complained of was caused by the improper navigation, negligence, and fault of the said steamer, producing the collision aforesaid, and the libellants are entitled to recover. (4) As there are no innocent rights to be affected by the present proceedings, and no inconvenience will result to the respondents from the delay attending it, the action, if not governed by the statute aforesaid, is not barred by the libellant's laches." 15 Fed. Rep. 610.

From that decree this appeal was taken, and the question to be decided presents itself in three aspects. which may be stated as follows: (1) Can a suit in ad

miralty be maintained in the courts of the United States to recover damages for the death of a human being on the high seas, or waters navigable from the sea, caused by negligence, in the absence of an act of Congress or a statute of a State giving a right of action therefor? (2) If not, can a suit in rem be maintained in admiralty against an offending vessel for the recovery of such damages when an action at law has been given therefor by statute in the State where the wrong was done, or where the vessel belonged? (3) If it can, will the admiralty courts permit such a recovery in a suit begun nearly five years after the death, when the statute which gives the right of action provides that the suit shall be brought within one year?

It was held by this court, on full consideration, in Insurance Co. v. Brame, 95 U. S. 756, "that by the common law no civil action lies for an injury which results in death." See also Dennick v. Railroad Co., 193 U. S. 11, 21. Such also is the judgment of the English courts, where an action of the kind could not be maintained until Lord Campbell's act (9 & 10 Vict., ch. 93). It was so recited in that act, and so said by Lord Blackburn in The Vera Cruz, 10 App. Cas. 59, decided by the Honse of Lords in 1884. Many of the cases bearing on this question are cited in the opinion Insurance Co. v. Brame. Others will be found referred to in an elaborate note to Carey v. Berkshire R. Co., 48 Am. Dec. 643. The only American cases in the common-law courts against the rule, to which our attention has been called, are Cross v. Guthery, 2 Root, 96; Ford v. Monroe, 20 Wend. 210; James v. Christy, 18 Mo. 162; and Sullivan v. Union Pacific R. Co., 3 Dill. 334. Cross v. Gathery, a Connecticut case, was decided in 1794, and cannot be reconciled with Goodsell v. Hartford, etc., R. Co., 33 Conn. 55, where it is said: "It is a singular fact that by the common law the greatest injury which one can inflict on another, the taking of his life, is without a private remedy." Ford v. Monroe, a New York case, was substantially overruled by the Court of Appeals of that State in Green v. Hudson River R. Co., 41* N. Y. 294; and Sullivan v. Union Pac. R. Co., decided in 1874 by the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska, is directly in conflict with Insurance Co. v. Brame, decided here in 1878.

We know of no English case in which it has been authoritatively decided that the rule in admiralty differs at all in this particular from that at common law. Indeed in The Vera Cruz, supra, it was decided that even since Lord Campbell's act a suit in rem could not be maintained for such a wrong. Opinions were delivered in that case by the lord chancellor (Selborne), Lord Blackburn and Lord Watson. In each of these opinions it was assumed that no such action would lie without the statute, and the only question discussed was whether the statute had changed the rule. In view then of the fact that in England, the source of our system of law, and from a very early period one of the principal maritime nations of the world, no suit in admiralty can be maintained for the redress of such a wrong, we proceed to inquire whether, under the general maritime law, as administered in the courts of the United States, a contrary rule has been or ought to be established.

death of the child, though the death was occasioned by the severity of the battery:" but the suit was dismissed because upon the evidence it did not appear that the father had in fact been damaged. The case was afterward before Mr. Justice Story on appeal, and is reported in 4 Mason, 380, but the question now involved was not considered, as the court found that the cause of action set forth in the libel and proved was not maritime in its nature.

We find no other reported case in which this subject was at all discussed until Cutting v. Seabury, 1 Spr. 522, decided by Judge Sprague in the Massachusetts district in 1860. In that case, which was in personam, the judge said that "the weight of authority in the common-law courts seems to be against the action, but natural equity and the general principles of law are in favor of it," and that he could not consider it "as settled that no action can be maintained for the death of a human being." The libel was dismissed however, because on the facts it appeared that no cause of action existed, even if in a proper case a recovery could be had. The same eminent judge had however held as early as 1849, in Crapo v. Allen, 1 Spr. 185, that rights of action in admiralty for mere personal torts did not survive the death of the person injured.

Next followed the case of The Sea Gull, Chase Dec. 145, decided by Chief Justice Chase in the Maryland district in 1867. That was a suit in rem by a husband to recover damage for the death of his wife caused by the negligence of the steamer in a collision in the Chesapeake bay, and a recovery was had; the chief justice remarking that there are cases indeed in which it has been held that in a suit at law no redress can be had by the surviving representative for injuries occasioned by the death of one through the wrong of another; but these are all common-law cases and the common law has its peculiar rules in relation to this subject, traceable to the feudal system and its forfeitures;" and "it better becomes the humane and liberal character of proceedings in admiralty to give than to withhold the remedy when not required to withhold it by established and inflexible rules." In his opinion he refers to the leading English case of Baker v. Bolton, 1 Camp. 493, where the common-law rule was recognized and followed by Lord Ellenborough in 1808; and to Carey v. Berkshire R. Co., 1 Cush. 475, to the same effect, decided by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts is 1848, and then says that "in other States the English precedent has not been followed." For this he cites as authority Ford v. Monroe, supra, decided in 1838, but which, as we have seen, had been overruled by Green v. Hudson River R. Co., in 1866, only a short time before the opinion of the chief justice was delivered; andJames v. Christy, 18 Mo. 162, decided by the Supreme Court of Missouri in 1853. The case of The Highland Light, Chase Dec. 150, was before Chief Justice Chase in Maryland about the same time with The Sea Gull; and while adhering to his ruling in that case, and remarking that "the admiralty may be styled, not improperly, the human providence who watches over the rights and interests of those who go down to the sea in ships, and do their business on the great waters,' he referred to a Maryland statute giving a right of action in such cases, and then dismissed the libel because on the facts no liability was established against the vessel as an offending thing. Afterward, in 1873, Mr. Justice Blatchford, then the

of New York, sustained a libel by an administrator of an infant child who took passage on the steamer City of Brussels, with his mother, at Liverpool, to be car

oned by the carelessness of the officers of the vessel, and died on board. The City of Brussels, G Ben. 370.