wages the courts of common law admit to be of admiralty jurisdiction; and this is an exception in favour of seamen, to the general rule that the admiralty has no jurisdiction of any matter arising on land, though it be of a maritime nature, as a charter-party, or policy of insurance. The district court, as a court of admiralty, possesses a general jurisdiction in suits by seamen and salvors, and by material men, in rem and in personam. The courts of admiralty have a general jurisdiction to enforce maritime liens by process in rem, and there may be a maritime jurisdiction in personam, where there is no lien, and consequently no jurisdiction in rem. Seamen have an implied lien on the vessel for services rendered upon the high seas or upon tide waters. They may proceed in rem and in personam; but the proceeding in rem is only maintainable by material men when there is a specific lien, or for wages, or for repairs made, or necessaries furnished to a foreign ship, or to a ship in the ports of the state to which she does not be*380 long. (1) The admiralty jurisdiction is essential *in all

a

Steamboat Ohio, Gilpin's R. 505. But to render a service on board a vessel even on tide waters maritime, so far as to give admiralty jurisdiction over it as for wages, it must contribute to the preservation of the vessel, or of those whose labour and skill are employed to navigate her. Musicians do not come within that description. Trainer v. The Superior, Gilpin's R. 514. The service must be essentially maritime; labour on board a fuel or coal boat is not of that description. Thackarcy v. The Farmer, ibid. 524. The service must concern transactions and proceedings relative to commerce and navigation, and to damages and injuries upon the sea. Nor has the admiralty any jurisdiction in matters of account between part owners. The Steamboat Orleans v. Phoebus, 11 Peters, 175. It is limited in matters of contract to those which are maritime. Ibid. Thus, in the case of the Thomas Jefferson, 10 Wheaton, 428, it was held, that the admiralty had no jurisdiction over contracts for the hire of seamen, unless the service was substantially performed upon the sea, or upon waters within the ebb and flow of the tide. Suits for seamen's wages on a voyage from a place in Kentucky, up the river Missouri and back again, were therefore not of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. But state courts under state laws have jurisdiction in rem in case of supplies and repairs to boats or vessels on river navigation in the interior, as well as under contracts for the carriage of persons or property upon navigable river waters. Statutes of Missouri, 1835, p. 102. The district courts, as instance courts of admiralty, have cognizance of all claims for salvage in cases of shipwreck, and of vessels derelict at sea. This is well settled by the American cases. See Conkling's Treatise, 2d edit. 156.

a The Hope, 3 Rob. 215. The Trelawney, 3 Rob. R. 216, note. The General

(1) As to a "specific lien," see ante, p. [369,] note (1). Cutter v. Rea, 7 How. R. 729.

such cases, for the process of a court of common law cannot directly reach the thing in specie. If the law raises a lien for a maritime service, a court of admiralty has power to carry it into effect. The act of congress of July 20th, 1790, relative to seamen, section 6, has given a specific and summary relief for seamen in the recovery of wages, by authorizing the district judge, or, in his absence, a magistrate, to summon the master before him, and to attach the vessel as security for the wages.b

Smith, 4 Wheaton, 438. The Jerusalem, 2 Gallison, 345. The Robert Fulton, 1 Paine's Rep. 620. Drinkwater v. Spartan, Ware's Rep. 149. Sheppard v. Taylor, 5 Peters' U. S. Rep. 675. Story, J., in the case of the Brig Nestor, 1 Sumner, 74. Conkling's Treatise, 2d edit. 155. The Schooner Marion, 1 Story's R. 68. See also infra, vol. iii. 167-170. If materials for a vessel be furnished in a home port, and a note of hand given by the owner, a libel in the admiralty in personam will not lie. Bamsay v. Allegro, 12 Wheaton, 611. In this last case the extent of admiralty jurisdiction in personam was much discussed and questioned by Mr. Justice Johnson. But in Willard v. Dorr, 3 Mason's Rep. 93, and in Hammond v. Essex F. and M. Ins. Co., 4 Mason's Rep. 196, Mr. Justice Story considered it to be settled jurisdiction of the admiralty, that the master could sue there in personam for his wages, and the seamen in rem as well as in personam for their wages. This appears to be a well-established distinction.

a

Philips v. Scattergood, 1 Gilpin, 1. No prior replevin or attachment of the property under any state court process can control the paramount jurisdiction of the admiralty in rem, for freight or seamen's wages, or on a bottomry bond. Certain Logs of Mahogany, 2 Sumner, 589. A person hired for service as one of the crew on board of a canal boat, under a coasting license, in the coal trade from the tide waters of the river Delaware, through the Raritan canal, to the tide waters in the harbour of New-York, performs service of a maritime character, and has a lien on the vessel for his wages, and may proceed in rem for the same. Weizer v. Coal Boat, D. C. Salisbury, D. C. U. S. New-York, November, 1844.

See vol. iii. 169-171, as to the lien of material men. Ibid. as to the remedy for seamen's wages. Material men and workmen, having liens on vessels under state laws, may enforce them in the District Court as well as in a state court at their election, as the jurisdiction is in that case concurrent. Davis v. A New Brig, Gilpin's R. 473. In the case of Heyer and others v. The Schooner Wave, in the District Court of the southern district of New-York, (2 Paine's Rep.,) the plaintiffs, as branch or deputy pilots, libelled the vessel for salvage, in relieving her in distress within the harbour of New-York, and salvage was allowed. On appeal to the Circuit Court of the United States for the southern district of New-York, the decree was reversed, on the ground that the act of congress of August 7th, 1789, c. 9, had adopted the pilotage laws of the states respectively, temporarily, and had not since interfered, and that the remedy for the pilots was in the state courts, and that the District Court had no jurisdiction in the case of pilotage, arising within the waters of the states, until congress should give it, as they had the right to do. See infra, vol. iii. p. 176, note.

We have now finished a general survey of the admiralty jurisdiction of the district courts in civil and criminal cases, and both as an instance and a prize court. It would not be consistent with the plan of these elementary disquisitions, to give a detailed sketch of the course of proceeding, and of the peculiar practice in the admiralty courts. The proceedings are according to the course of the civil law, and are remarkable for their comprehensive brevity, celerity and simplicity. Nothing can be more unlike in its process, pleadings, proof, trial and remedy, than the practice of the courts of admiralty and of the courts of common law.a

Civil juris *381

diction of the Dist. Courts.

*(5.) The jurisdiction of the District Court, when proceeding as a court of common law, extends to all minor crimes and offences cognizable under the authority of the United States, and which are not strictly of admiralty cognizance; and to all seizures on land, and on waters not

The act of congress of May 8th, 1792, c. 36. sec. 2, declared that the form of writs, executions and other process, except their style, in suits of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, should be according to the principles, rules and usages which belong to courts of admiralty, as contradistinguished from courts of common law, subject to alterations and additions by the said courts, and to regulations to be prescribed by the Supreme Court. For a knowledge of the admiralty practice, I would refer the student to Clerke's Practice of the Court of Admiralty in England, which is a work of undoubted credit; and in 1809, a new edition was published in this country by Mr. Hall, with an appendix of precedents. I would also refer him to the 2d volume of Brown's Civil and Admiralty Law, and to the appendix to the 1st and 2d volumes of Mr. Wheaton's Reports, where he will find the practice of the instance and prize courts digested and summarily explained. See, also, the Treatise of Mr. Dunlap, on admiralty practice. He was formerly attorney of the United States for Massachusetts; and his work is pronounced, by the most competent judges, to be learned, accurate and well-digested. See, also, the case of Lane v. Townsend, in the District Court of Maine, in 1835, Ware's R. 287, in which the learned judge defines the nature and effect of stipulations in the admiralty. That case contains a learned examination of the mode of commencing a suit, and of the prætorian stipulations required of the defendant in the Roman law, and it satisfactorily shows great inaccuracy in Brown's view of the subject of the stipulations, cautions or securities required in the progress of the suit by the practice of the Roman Forum. In the case, also, of Hutson v. Jordan, Ware's Rep. 385. 395, the admiralty practice, as derived from the Roman law and the civil law courts, is discussed with the customary learning and ability of the distinguished judge. So also the practice on the joinder of different actions of different natures in one libel. Ibid. 427. See in 3 N. Y. Legal Observer, 357, and in the Law Reporter, for March, 1846, the rules of practice in the courts of the United States, in causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction on the instance side of the court, established in pursuance of the act of congress of 23d August, 1842, c. 188.

navigable from the sea; and to all suits for penalties and forfeitures there incurred; and to all suits by aliens, for torts done in violation of the law of nations, or of a treaty; and to suits against consuls and vice-consuls; and to all suits at common law, where the United States sue, and the matter in dispute amounts to one hundred dollars. It has jurisdiction, likewise, of proceedings to repeal patents obtained surreptitiously, or upon false suggestions. This was given by the act of congress of February 21st, 1793, chap. II., and it is a jurisdiction that leads frequently to the most intricate, nice and perplexed investigations, respecting the originality of inventions and improvements in complicated machinery. It was made a question in the District Court of New-York, in the case ex parte Wood, whether the process to be awarded to repeal the patent, was not in the nature of a scire facias at common law, upon which issue of fact might be taken and tried by a jury. The district judge decided, that the proceeding was summary, upon a rule to show cause, and that no process of scire facias was afterwards admissible. But upon appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, the decree of the District Court was reversed, and the District Court was directed by mandamus to enter upon record the proceedings in the cause antecedent to the granting of the rule to show cause why process should not issue to repeal the patent. The District Court was further directed to award process, in the nature of a scire facias, to the patentee, to show cause why the patent should not be repealed; and upon the return *of the process, the court was to *382 proceed to try the cause upon the pleadings of the parties, and the issue of law or fact joined thereon, as the case might be; and that if the issue be an issue of fact, the trial thereof was to be by jury, according to the course of the common law.

This was a just and liberal decision of the Supreme Court t; and it was observed, in the opinion which was pronounced, that it was not lightly to be presumed, that congress, in this class of patent cases, placed peculiarly within their patronage

and protection, involving some of the dearest and most valuable rights which society acknowledges, and the constitution itself meant to favour, would institute a new and summary process, which should finally adjudge upon those rights without a trial by jury, without a right of appeal, and without any of those guards with which, in equity suits, it has fenced round the general administration of justice. The Supreme Court then went into an analytical examination of the 10th section of the act of 1793, on which the claim of summary jurisdiction rested, and vindicated the construction which they assumed, in opposition to that taken by the District Court.

The jurisdiction of the judges of the district courts, in cases of bankruptcy, has presented for consideration some important questions on the point of jurisdiction. We have no bankrupt system in existence under the government of the United States; but there may be some lingering traces of business yet arising and undetermined, under the bankrupt act of the year 1800, and many questions may be expected to arise under the bankrupt act of 1841, which has been recently repealed. In the case of Comfort Sands, in the District Court of New-York, it was observed, that, in England, the sole power of directing the execution, and controlling the

administration of the bankrupt system, in all its de*383 partments, and in every stage of the proceeding, resided in the lord chancellor.

This jurisdiction of the English chancellor is not in the court of chancery, but in the individual who holds the great seal; and it is exercised summarily upon petition, and his judgment upon the petition is without appeal, unless the chancellor, in his discretion, allows a bill to be filed, in order to found an appeal thereon. The judge then proceeded to examine the several provisions of the bankrupt act of the United States of 1800, in order to show, that upon the principles of construction adopted in England, the district judge had the same jurisdiction in cases of bankruptcy as is exercised by the lord chancellor. The same course of reasoning

* See infra, vol. ii. 391.

b United States Law Journal, vol. i. p. 15.