Court Opinion

ID: 9416637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 19:50:41.494555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:58.417577
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice DANIEL
dissenting:
Against the opinion of the court in this cause, and the doctrines assumed in its support, I feel constrained solemnly to protest.
If in the results which have heretofore attended repeated efforts on my part to assert what are regarded both as the sacred authority of the Constitution and the venerable dictates of the law were to be sought the incentive to this remonstrance, this act might' appear to be without motive; for it cannot be denied that to earnest and successive remonstrances have succeeded still wider departures from restrictions previously recognised, until in the case before -us every limit upon power, save those which judicial discretion or the propensity of the court may think proper to impose, is now cast aside. But it is felt-that in the discharge of official obligation there may be motives much higher than either the prospect or the attainment''of success can supply; and it may be accepted as a moral axiom, that he who, under convictions of duty, cannot steadily oppose his exertions, though feeble and unaided, to the march of. power, when believed to be wrongful, however overshadowing it may appear,- must be an unsafe depositary of either public or private confidence. My convictions pledge me to an unyiélding condemnation of pretensions once denominated,-by a distinguished member of this court, “the silent and stealing progress-of the admiralty in acquiring jurisdiction to which it has no pretensions; ” and still more inflexibly of the fearful and tremendous assumptions of power now openly proclaimed for tribunals pronounced by the vener- • able Hale, by Coke, and by Blackstone, and by the authorities avouched for their opinions, to have been merely tolerated by, and always' subordinate to, the authority of the common law— an usurpation licensed to overturn the most inveterate principles of that law; licensed in it's exercise to invade the jurisdic*308tion of sovereign communities, and to defy and abrogate the most vital immunities' of' their social or political organization. I cannot, without a sense-of delinquency, omit any occasion of protesting against what to my mind is an abuse of the greatest magnitude, and one which, hopeless as at present the prospect of remedy may appear, it would seem could require nothing but attention to its character and tendencies to insure a corrective. It must of necessity be resisted in practice,- as wholly irreconcilable with every guarantee of the rights of person or property, or with the power of internal police in the States.
Having, in cases formerly before this court, (vid. 6 How., p. 395 et seq., New Jersey Steam Navigation Company v. Merchants’ Bank; 10 How., p. 607, Newton v. Stebbins; 12 How., 465, Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh; 18 How., p. 269, Ward v. Peck;) traced with some care the origin of the admiralty jurisdiction in England, and the modes and limits to which that jurisdiction was there subjected, no farther reference will here be. made to the authorities by which that investigation has been guided, than is necessary to illustrate the origin and extent of the like jurisdiction as appertaining to the tribunals of the United States. Amongst the novelties which are daily brought to notice, it would not awaken very great surprise to hear it contended, in the support of a favorite theory or posision, that the admiralty courts of England were not governed by the laws and ordinances of that country, or in effect that England did not govern herself; but has been, and still is, controlled by some foreign or extraneous authority. Something not unlike this strange idea has, on more than one occasion; been intimated; and with respect to her colonies, strictly subordinate as they are known to have ever been in political and legislative power to the mother country, it has been broadly asserted that these have been released from the restrictions upon the admiralty in the mother country, whilst this emancipation is coupled with the incongruous position that they (and the United States, as once forming a portion of those colonies) are more or less subject to the admiralty regulations of every petty community In the world. I-am constrained to repel such an argument, if argument it can be called, as consonant neither with reason nor historical accuracy. The only known difference between the administration in admiralty courts in the mother country and in her American colonies, was created by express statute, with reference to the revenue; was limited to the single regulation prescribed by the statute; and has, by -every writer upon the subject, been treated as a special direction, applicable solely to the -matter of which it *309treated, and' as neither entering into, nor deducible from, any regular and constitutional attribute of the admiralty jurisdiction. It was an exception, an anomaly, and in'its nature and operation was unique and solitary. Of the same character, precisely, is the provision of the eleventh section of the judiciary act of 1789, which invests the District Courts with jurisdiction in cases of seizure under the laws of imposts of the United States. This provision confers, in the first place, in general terms, without limitation, on the District Courts, admiralty and maritime-jurisdiction. So far, then, as it was the purpose to constitute these tribunals courts of admiralty, the jurisdiction conferred by the language of the act just quoted was complete. The District Courts were thereby created courts of admiralty to all intents and purposes; but the section goes on to add to the powers ofrthe District Courts, the cognizance of other subjects not regularly appertaining to the jurisdiction of the admiralty, viz: of seizures under the laws of imposts ; subjects belonging to a class which was in England peculiarly cognizable in the court of exchequer, and under the authority and. process of the common law.
The conclusion, then, from the eleventh section of the judiciary act, is inevitably this: that the power thereby vested with respect to seizures, is not an admiralty power — was never conferred by the investment of admiralty power in accordance with the Constitution; but is in its character distinct therefrom, and is peculiar and limited in its extent. Such appears to have been the opinion of two distinguished commentators upon the admiralty jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, Chancellor Kent and Mr. Dane; the former of whom, in the 1st vol. of his Commentaries, p. 376, holds this language: “Congress had a right, in their discretion, to make all seizures and. forfeitures cognizable in the District Courts; but it may be a question whether they had any right to declare them to be cases of admiralty jurisdiction, if they were not so by the law* of the land when the Constitution was made. The Constitution secures to the citizen trial by jury in all criminal prosecutions, and in all civil suits at common law where the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars. These prosecutions for forfeitures of large and valuable portions of property, under the revenue laws, are highly penal in their consequences; and the Government and its officers are always parties, and deeply concerned in the conviction and forfeiture. And if, by act of Congress or by judicial decisions, the prosecution can be turned over to the admiralty side of the District Court, as being neither a criminal prosecution nor a suit at common law, the trial of the cause is then transferred from a jury of the country to *310the breast of a single judge. It is probable, however, that the. judiciary act did not intend to.do more than to declare the jurisdiction of the District Courts over these cases; and that all the prosecutions for penalties and forfeitures upon seizures under laws of imposts, navigation, and trade, were not to be considered of admiralty jurisdiction when the case admitted of a prosecution at oommon law; for the act saves to suitors in all 'cases the right to a common-law remedy, where the common law was competent to give it. We have seen that it is competent to give it; because, under the vigorous system of the English law, such prosecutions in rem are in the exchequer, according to the course of the common law; and it may be doubted whether the case of La Vengeance," on which all subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court have rested, was sufficiently considered. The vice-admiralty courts in this country when we.were colonies, and also in the West Indies, obtained jurisdiction in revenue causes to an extent totally unknown to the jurisdiction of the English admiralty, and with powers as enlarged as those claimed at the present day. BUt this extension, by statute, of the jurisdiction of the American vice-admiralty courts beyond their ancient limits to revenue cases and penalties, was much discussed and. complained of at the commencement of the Revolution.’’ Judge Colliding also, in his Treatise on the Admiralty, vol. 2, p. 391, says: “In England, all revenue seizures are cognizable exclusively in the exchequer; and such of them as are cognizable on the admiralty side of . the District Courts of the United States are made so only by force of a legislative act.” ■
From the above exposition of the jurisdiction of the vice-admiralty courts in the British colonies, it is manifest that neither by custom nor practice, nor by positive enactment, has-there ever been created in those courts any power or jurisdiction appertaining to their character and constitution strictly as . courts of admiralty, which they did not derive, regularly by their commission from the Lord High Admiral. Brown, inhis Civil and Admiralty Law, vol. 2, p. 490, says of these courts, “that all .powers of the vice-admiralty courts within His Majesty’s dominions are derived from the High Admiral, or the Commissioners of Admiralty in England, as inherent and incident to that office. Accordingly, by virtue of their commission, the Lords of the Admiralty are authorized to erect vice-admiralty courts in North America, the West Indies, and the settlements of the East India Company; and in case any person be aggrieved by sentence, or interlocutory decree having the force of a sentence, he may appeal to the High Coult of Admiralty.” So, too, Blackstone, vol. 3, p. 68, says: "Appeals from the *311vice-admiralty courts in America, and our other plantations and settlements, may be brought before the courts of admiralty.in England, as being a branch of the Admiral’s jurisdiction.”
It may here be pertinently asked, how, with this exposition of the law, can be reconciled the assertion that at the time of the American Revolution, and down to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, there were vested in the colonial courts of England, and were appropriate to them as courts of admiralty, powers which never were vested in their superior, by whom they were created, and by whom they were to be supervised and.^on'trolled? With perfect respect, it would seem to imply an incongruity, if not an absurdity, to ascribe to any- tribunal an appellate or revisory power with reference to matters beyond its legitimate jurisdiction, and which confessedly belonged to a different authority. Yet is this assertion of jurisdiction in admiralty in the colonial courts beyond that of their creator and superior, constantly renewed arguendo, whilst, in reply to repeated challenges of authority by which the assumption maybe sustained, not one adjudication in point has been adduced. Again, it may be asked whether, in the history of jurisprudence, another instance can be found in which it is alleged .that a system, a corpus juris, has grown up and been established, and yet not an ingredient, not a fragment of any such system can be discovered? But there have been decisions which were made in this country — decisions cotemporaneous with the event of the separation from the mother country ; but these decisions, respectable for their learning and ability, so far from sustaining the obiter assertion above mentioned, divest it of even plausibility; for they affirm and maintain a complete conformity and subordination of the admiralty jurisdiction in the colonies, to that which had prevailed in England from the time of the statutes of Richard, and from the days of Owen, Brownlow, Hobart, Eortescue, and Coke. I refer to the case of Clinton v. The Brig Hannah, decided by Judge Hopkinson, of Pennsylvania, in 1781, and the case of Shrewsbury v. The Sloop Two Friends, decided by Judge Bee, of South Carolina, in 1786. And, indeed, the phrase “admiralty jurisdiction,” except in the acceptation received by us from the English courts, is without intelligible or definite meaning, for under no other system of jurisprudence is the law of the marine known to be administered under the same organization.
Let us now take a view of the claims advanced for the admiralty power, in its constant attempts at encroachment upon the principles and genius of the common law, and of our republican and peculiar institutions, at least from the decision in the *312pase of the Thomas Jefferson, in the 10th of Wheaton, p. 428, to that of the Genesee' Chief v. Eitzhugh, in the 12th of Howard, 443, inclusive; this last a case, to my apprehension, more remarkable' and more startling as an assumption of judicial power than any. whieh the judicial history of the country has hitherto disclosed, prior to the case now under consideration.
By the statute of 13th Richard H, cap. 15th, it is enacted, that “the Admirals and their deputies shall meddle with nothing done within the realm, but only with things done upón the sea;” and by the 15th of Richard H, cap. 3d, “that in all contracts, pleas, and quarrels, and other, things done within the bodies of counties, hy land or water, the Admiral shall have no cognizance, but. they shall be tried by the law of the land.” The language of these provisions is truly remarkable. By that of the first is denounced the exclusion, utterly, of the Admiral’s power from the entire realm; by that of the second, is as explicitly denied to him all cognizance of things done inihe bodies of the counties, either by land or by water. And the statute of Henry IV, cap. 11, by way of insuring a sanction of these exclusions, provides, “that he who finds himself aggrieved against the form of the statutes of Richard, shall have his action grounded upon the case against him who so pursues in the admiralty, and recover double damages.” Lord Hale, in his History of-the Common Law, speaking of the court of admiralty, says, '(p. 51:) “This-court is not bottomed or'founded upon the authority of the civil law, but hath both its powers and jurisdiction by the law and custom of the realm in such matters- as are proper for its cognizance.”. And again, in an enumeration of matters not within the cognizance of the admiralty, he continues: “ So also of damages in navigable rivers within the bodies of counties, things done upon the shore at low-water mark, wreck of the sea, &c.; these things belong not to the Admiral’s jurisdiction.” And the cause, the only cause assigned as the foundation of that jurisdiction, is the peculiar locality of each instance, viz: its being neither within the body of any county or vicinage, nor infra fauces terree, so that the..V.enue or pays can be summoned for its trial. No one pretends to doubt that thus stood the admiralty law of the realm of England at the period of separation from the American colonies, and perhaps in the particulars above mentioned it may remain 'the unchanged law of that country to the present moment, as it is a fact recorded in history, that for a departure from that law, one of the most learned and brilliant of her admiralty judges (Sir William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell) was condemned in a very heavy-verdict._ . Such, I say, was the law of the realm of England, and I think that the fallacy or pretence of any change in *313the admiralty law proper of that realm, in its application to the' colonies; has been clearly demonstrated.
The admiralty law of England, according to every accurate test, was the admiralty law of the United States at the period of the adoption of the Constitution. It is pertinent in this place to remark, that the jurisdiction of the admiralty having been, both by the common law and by the language of the statutes of Richard II and Henry IV", excluded not only from the body of the counties, both on the land and on the water, and even from the realm, it- followed, ex consequenti, that the locality of that jurisdiction was (and necessarily so) within the ebb and flow of the tide. Hence, it is more than probable, arose the adoption and use of the phrase as a portion of the description of the locus of that jurisdiction, viz: that it was ■maritime, i. e.,-connected with or was upon the sea, and was neither upon the land nor within the fauces terree, n or upon any navigable water within a county, and was within the ebb and flow of the tide.
Under such a state of the admiralty law, conceded to be the law of England, and as I contend, the law of the United States, came before this court for decision the case of the Thomas Jefferson, in the 10th of Wheaton, p. 428. In this case, not a single ingredient required by the English cases to give jurisdiction existed. It could by no possibility or by any propriety of language be styled maritime, as every fact it presented occurred at the distance of a thousand miles from the ocean, and it could not be shown that there ever existed a tide in the water-course on which the occurrences that produced the suit originated. Net, in the absence of these essential ingredients of admiralty jurisdiction, the court, with that greed for power by which courts are so often impelled beyond the line of strict propriety, makes a query, whether, under the show of regulating commerce, Congress might not assert a distinctive and original authority, viz: the-power of the admiralty. The court, however, felt itself constrained to concede the necessity of a locality within the ebb and flow of the tide, and for the want of that requisite to deny the jurisdiction.
In the case of Peroux v. Howard, 7 Pet., 524, the necessity for the ebb and flow of the tide to give, jurisdiction is equally conceded; but the court, in order to maintain its power, deems itself authorized to appeal virtute officii, not to the attraction of the moon, the received philosophic explanation of this phenomenon, but to the current of the Mississippi, which, in' precipitating itself upon the waters of the Gulf, occasions, they say, .by conflict with the latter, some changes in the rise and fall of the river at New Orleans. This judicial theory of the *314tides possesses at least the characteristic of noyelty. Whether it will be accepted, and find a place in the annals of scientific discovery, may admit of some doubt.
Next follows in order of time the case of the Steamboat New Orleans v. Phoebus et al., 11 Pet., p. 175. In this case, as in that of Peroux v. Howard, the vessel libelled was in the same city of New Orleans, one of the termini of her trading voyages, and adj udged by the case last mentioned to be within the ebb and flow of the tide. It was contended by the counsel for the claimants of the steamboat New Orleans, a gentleman now upon this bench, that the situation of the steamboat libelled in each, case, as conferring jurisdiction by reason of locality, was identical; and it surpasses any acumen I possess, to perceive any real distinction between the cases. The .court, however, speaking through the late Justice Story, (whom none could ever suspect of any leaning against the admiralty,) insisting with consistent pertinacity on the requisite of the ebb and flow of the tide, said: “The case is not one of a steamboat engaged in maritime trade and navigation. Though in her voyages she may have touched at one terminus of them in tide-waters, her employment has been substantially on other waters. The admiralty has not any jurisdiction over vessels employed on such voyages in cases of disputes between part owners; The true test of. its jurisdiction in all cases of this sort is, whether the vessel be engaged substantially in maritime navigation, or in interior navigation and .trade not on tide-waters. In the latter case,, there is no jurisdiction. So that, in this view, the District Court had no jurisdiction over the steamboat involved in the present controversy, as she was wholly engaged in voyages on such interior waters.”
In the case of Waring et al. v. Clark, in the 5th of How., 441, and in that of the New Jersey Steam Navigation Company v. The Merchants’ Bank, in the 6th of How., 344, anomalous as these cases appear to me, and wholly unsustained either, as I deem them, by English precedent or by that construction of the Federal Constitution which is warranted, nay demanded, by the language of the Constitution, by history, or precedent, yet they both concur in establishing ih& ebb and flow of the tide as the test of jurisdiction in the admiralty. As, for example, in the former of these last-mentioned cases, the court announces the conclusion at which it had arrived, and which it pi'oposed to demonstrate by argument and authority, in the following terms, viz: “ It is the first time that the point has been distinctly presented to this court, whether a case of collision in our rivers, where the tide ebbs and flows, is within the admiralty jurisdiction of the courts of the United States if the locality *315be, in the sense in which it is used by the common-law j udges in England, infra corpus comitatus. It is this, point that we are now about to decide, and it is our wish that nothing which may be said in the course of our remarks shall be extended to embrace any other case of contested admiralty jurisdiction.” Thus, too, in the second of these cases, Nelson, J., as the organ of the majority of the court, p. 392, propounds these propositions: “On looking into the several cases in admiralty which have come before this court, and in which its jurisdiction was involved or came under observation, it will be found that the inquiry has been, not into the jurisdiction of the court of admiralty in. England, but into the nature and subject-matter of the contract, whether it was a maritime contract, and the service a maritime service, to be performed upon the sea, or upon toaters within the ebb and flow of the tide.” And again: “The exclusive jurisdiction in admiralty was conferred on the National Government, as closely connected with the grant of the commercial power. It is a maritime court, instituted for the purpose of administering the' laxo of the seas. There - seems to be ground, therefore, for restraining its jurisdiction in some measure within the grant of the commercial power, which would confine it in eases of contracts to those concerning the navigation and trade of the country, upon the high seas and tide-waters, ivith foreign countries,, and amongst the several States. . Contracts growing out of the purely internal commerce of the State, as well as commerce bexjoxxd tide-ioaters, are generally domestic in their origin and operation, and could scarcely have been intended to be drawn within the cognizance of the Federal courts.”
These several decisions, founded, as they are believed to have been, in error, and upon a misconstruction of the law, of the Constitution, and the history of the country, in so far as they sought to permit invasions of the territorial, municipal, and political rights of the States, are, nevertheless, not entirely without their value. By the limit they prescribed to the admiralty, viz: the ebb and flow of the tide, they at least rejected the ambitious claim to undefined and undefinable judcial discretion over the Constitution and the law, (and the indispensable territorial rights of the States,) and so far fortified the foundations of a- Government, based, in theory at any rate, upon restricted and exactly-defined delegations of power only. It was under the stress of the aforegoing decisions, and, as is well known, upon an application of a portion of this court, that the act of Congress of February 26, 1845,. cap. 22, was passed, with the sole view of extending the admiralty jurisdiction to cases arising uuon the lakes, and upon the rivers con*316necting the saicl lakes, on which there were no tides, and which (i. e., the lakes) were within no State limits. Here, then, we nave the exception, the solitary exception, fortifying the general rule as to the admiralty jurisdiction, which jurisdiction is again described and defined in this provision of the statute above quoted, as existing upon the high seas or upon the tidewaters of the United States only.
This interference by the legislative department of the Government, elicited, too, by the judiciary department, whether within the competency of the former, under the Constitution, or not, must be received by every reasonable rule of induction as a concession, by both, that there existed a propriety or necessity for the enlargement of the admiralty jurisdiction, over the lakes, and the rivers which connected them, in which there were no tides, and that whatever extension was either called for or made must be the result of legislative action, and not of mere judicial discretion. The repeated and explicit decisions of this court already cited, and the act of Congress of 1845, might, it is supposed, have been regarded as some earnest of uniformity and certainty in defining the admiralty jurisprudence of the United States, at least upon the points adjudged, and as to the provisions of the. statute; but, in this age of progress, such anticipations are held, to be amongst the wildest fallacies. It is now discovered that the principles asserted by the admiralty courts in England, or said to have been propounded •by the mysterious, unedited, and unproduced proceedings of the colonial vice-admiralty courts, so often avouched here in argument; the decisions of this court and the provisions of the act of 1845, are all to be thrown aside, as wholly erroneous. That the admiralty power is not-, to be restricted by its-effect upon the territorial, political, or. municipal rights and institutions upon which it may be brought to hear, nor by any checks from the authority of the common law. That there is but one rule by which its extent is to be computed, and that is the rule which measures it by miles or leagues; that the scale for its admeasurement can be applied only as the discretion of the judiciary may determine, upon its necessity or policy, irrespective of the Constitution, the statute, or the character of the element on which it is to be exerted, or the adjudications of this court on this last point. . That the admiralty of. the fixed and limited realm of England, and as known to the framers of the Constitution, cannot be the admiralty of this day; and,- of course, the.admiralty of our time and of our present day must be changed according to the judgment or discretion of the courts, in the event of further acquisitions of territory.
Such are the conclusions regularly deducible from the opin*317ion of this court in the case of the Genesee Chief — conclusions, in my deliberate judgment, the most startling and dangerous innovations, anterior to that decision, ever attempted upon the powers and rights of internal government appertaining to the States. Speaking of the case of Waring v. Clark, the court say, p. 456 of 12 How.: “ The majority of the'court thought there was sufficient proof of tide there, and consequently it was not necessary to consider whether the admiralty power extended higher. But that case showed the unreasonableness of giving a construction to the Constitution which would measure the jui’isdiction of the admiralty by the tide." It may, I think, be here pertinently inquired, whether the natural and appropriate limit of a jurisdiction, admitted by all to be maritime, can be the more reasonably measured by the element on which alone that jurisdiction is authorized to act, for which alone existence has Been given it, or by an indefinite, arbitrary, and mutable mathematical or geographical extension ? Again, it is said by the court, (p. 457,) speaking of the limitation resulting from the character of the river: “If such be the construction, then a line drawn across the river Mississippi would limit the jurisdiction, although there were ports of entry above it, and water as deep and navigable, and the commerce as rich and exposed to the same hazards and incidents as the commerce below.” If the experience of a pretty long official life had not familiarized me with instances, unhappily not a few, in which the meaning and objects of the Constitution and the just influence of the actually surrounding condition of the country when that instrument was framed have been lost sight of or made to yield to some prevailing vogue of the times, I confess that some surprise would have been felt at the seeming forgetfulness of the' court in giving utterance to the expressions above quoted, of the facts, that when the Constitution was adopted, there was no such navigation as that on the Mississippi then known — no such river was then possessed by the United States; that the Constitution was formed by, and for, a coexisting political and civil association; was designed to be adapted to that state of things; and was jin itself complete, and fully adapted to the ends and subjects to which it was intended to be applied. And but for the reason or the examples above referred to, the greater surprise would have been awakened by the disregard manifested,-in the reasoning of .the court, to this great fundamental principle of republican government, that if the Constitution was, at the period of its adoption, or has since, by the mutations of time and events, become inadequate to accomplish the objects, of its creation, it belongs exclusively to those who formed it, and in whom resides the right to alter or abolish -;, *318to remedy its defects. No such power can exist with those who are the. creatures of the Constitution, clothed with the humbler office of executing the provisions of that instrument. Suppose, at the time of its adoption, the Constitution was universally believed to be defective, in many respects essentially defective, would such a conviction have rendered it less the Constitution? Would it have lessened in any degree the obligation of obedience to it, or changed the power whence a remedy for its defects was to be derived? Could the judiciary, without usurpation, have essayed such a remedy ? It is conceded by the court, that at the time of forming the Constitution the admiralty jurisprudence of England was the only system known and practiced in this country; it is admitted, also, that the English system was limited in theory and practice to the ebb and flow of the tide. It is further admitted, that at the time the Constitution was adopted, and our courts of admiralty went into operation, the definition which had been adopted in England was equally proper here. These admissions form a virtual surrender of anything like a foundation on which the decision of the court could be rested, either in the case of the Genesee Chief or in this case depending on that alone. For, if it be admitted that at the time of the adoption of the Constitution the admiralty rule in England limited the jurisdiction to tide-waters, and that the same rule was adopted and was proper here, it follows, by inevitable induction, that the jurisdiction intended to be created by the Constitution was that which was the only one then known, and which, in the language of this court, was then proper here, (as the Constitution cannot be supposed to establish anything unauthorized or improper,) and necessarily was complete, and adapted to the existing state of things. And this inquiry, therefore, forces itself upon us, viz: if the system was thus limited, and was known to be so by the framers of the Constitution, and if this instrument was designed to be applicable to the existing state of things, and was complete in itself, in all its delegations of and restrictions upon power, where is to be sought the right or power to enlarge or to diminish the effect or meaning of the instrument to make it commensurate with a predicament or state of things not merely not existing when the Constitution was framed, but which was not even within the contemplation of those by whom it was created? Such a power could not exist in the legislature, the only branch of the Government on which anything like a faculty to originate measures was conferred; much less could it be claimed by functionaries who have not, and rightfully cannot have, any creative faculties, but whose capacities and duties are restricted to an interpretation of the *319Constitution and laws as they should have been fairly expounded at the times of their enactment.
But the court, after having declared the correctness of the English rule and its adoption here, go on to say, nevertheless, “that a definition which would at this day limit public river's to tide-water rivers is wholly inadmissible.’'’ And why? Because the Constitution, either by express language or by necessary implication, recognises or looks to any change or enlargement in the principles or the extent of admiralty jurisdiction ? Oh, no! Eor no such reason as this. .“But we have now (say the court) thousands of miles of public navigable water, including lakes and rivers, in which there is no tide.” ' Such is the argument of the court, and, correctly interpreted, it amounts to this: The Constitution, which at its adoption suited perfectly well the situation of the country, and which .then was unquestionably of supreme authority, we now adjudge to have •become unequal to the exigencies of the times; it must therefore be substituted by something more efficient; and as the people, and the States, and the Federal Legislature, are tardy or delinquent in making this substitution, the duty or the credit of this beneficent work must be devolved upon the judiciary. Itis said by the court, “ that there is certainly no reason for admiralty power over a public tide-water, which does not apply with equal force to any other public waters used for commercial purposes.” Let this proposition be admitted literally, it would fall infinitely short of a demonstration, that because the Constitution, adequate to every exigency when created, did not comprise predicaments not then in existence or in contemplation, it can be stretched, by any application of judicial torture, to cover any such exigency, either real or supposed. This argument forcibly revives the recollection of the interpretation of the phrase “necessary and proper,” once ingeniously and strenuously wielded to prove that a bank, incorporated with every faculty and attribute of such an institution, was not in reality, nor was designed to be, a bank; but was essentially an agent, an indispensable agent, in the administration of the Federal Government. And with reference to this doctrine of necessity, or propriety, or convenience, it may here be remarked, that it is as gratuitous and as much out of place with respect to the admiralty jurisdiction, as it was with respect to the Bank of the United States — perhaps still more so; as it is certain, and obvious to every well-informed individual, that, with the exception of some -of the lakes, there is not a watercourse in the country, situated above the ebb and flow of the tide, which is not bounded on one or on both its margins by some county. And in the case before us, it is alleged expressly *320in the pleading, and admitted throughout, that every fact in reference thereto transpired upon an inland water of the State of Alabama, two hundred miles above the tide, and within the county of "Wilcox, in that State. And by adhering to what is an essential test of the admiralty jurisdiction in England, and formerly adopted and practiced upon in this country, there will be obtained a standard as to that jurisdiction, tar more uniform and rational than that furnished by the tides. I allude to the rule which repels the pretensions of the admiralty whenever it attempts to intrude them infra corpus comitatus. This is the true rule as to jurisdiction, as it is susceptible of certainty, and concedes and secures to each system of jurisprudence, that of the admiralty and of the common law, its legitimate and appropriate powers. Eor this plain and rational test, this court now attempts to substitute one in its nature vague and arbitrary, and tending inevitably to confusion and conflict.. It is now affirmed, that the jurisdiction and powers of the admiralty extend to all waters that are navigable within or without the territory of a State. In quest of certainty, under this new doctrine, the inquiry is naturally suggested, what are navigable waters ? Will it be proper to adopt, in the interpretation of this phrase, an etymological derivation from navis, and to designate, as navigable waters, those only on whose bdsomsships and navies can be floated? Shall it embracsswaters.on which sloops and shallops, or what are generally termed river craft, can swim; or shall it be extended to any water on which a batteau or a pirogue can be floated? These are all, at any rate, practicable waters, navigable in a certain sense. . If any point between the extremes just mentioned is to be taken, there is at once' opened a prolific source of uncertainty, of contestation and expense. And if the last of these, extremes be adopted, then there is scarcely an internal water-course, whether in its natural condition, or as improved under the authority and with the resources of the States, or a canal, or a mill-pond,some of which are known to cover many acres of land, (and, as this court can convert rivers without tides into seas, may be metamorphosed into small lakes,) which would not by this doctrine be brought within the grasp of the admiralty. Some of our canals are navigated by steam, and some of them by sails; some of them are adjuncts to rivers, and form continuous communications with the ocean; all of them are fed by, and therefore are made portions of, rivers. Under this new regime, the hand of Federal power may be thrust into everything, even into a vegetable or fruit basket; and there is no production of a farm, an orchard, or a garden, on the margin of these water-' courses, which is not liable to be arrested on its way to the next *321market town by the high admiralty power, with all its parade of appendages; and the simple, plain, homely countryman, who imagined he had some comprehension of his rights, and their remedies under the .cognizance of a justice of the peace, or of a county court, is now, through the instrumentality of some apt fomenter of trouble, metamorphosed and magnified from a country attorney into a proctor, to be confounded and put to silence by a learned display from Roccus de Navibus, Emerigon, or Pardessus, from the Mare Clausum, or from the Trinity Masters, or the Apostles.
A citizen of any State of this Confederacy, hound as he is by habit, by affection, and fealty, to the soil and the institutions of his fathers, upon whom this magnificent machinery is brought to bear, (especially when recollecting by whom, and for whose sole benefit, this Confederacy was created,) may, as I have often done when contemplating the ceaseless march of central encroachment, be led to a tone of reflection like the following:
“Urbem quam Romam dicunt putavi, Stultus ego, huic nostrae similem, Verum hmc tantum, alias inter caput extulit urbes, Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.”
Eew, comparatively, of the attributes of sovereignty and equality, presupposed to have existed in those by whom the Eederal Government was created, have remained perfectly intact and exempt from aggression by their own creature"; and by no conceivable agency could they be more fearfully assailed than by this indefinite and indefinable pretension to admiralty power, which, spurning the restraints prescribed to it by the wise caution of our o'wn ancestors, challenges, as occasion suits, the opinions and practices of all nations, people, and tongues, however diverse or incongruous with the genius of our own institutions.
Not the least curious circumstance marking this course, is the assertion, that it produces equality amongst all the citizens of the United States. Equality it may be, but it is equality of subjection to an unknown and unlimited discretion, in lieu of allegiance to defined and legitimate authority.
In truth, the extravagance of these claims to an all-controlling central power, their utter incongruity with any just proportion or equipoise of the- different parts of our system, would exhibit them as positively ludicrous, were it not 'for the serious mischiefs to which, if tolerated, they must inevitably lead— mischiefs which should characterize those pretensions as fatal to the inherent and necessary powers of self-preservation and internal government in the States; as at war with the inter*322ests, the habits and feelings of the people, and' therefore to be reprobated and wholly rejected. For myself, I can only say, that to whatsoever point they may, under approbation here or elsewhere, have culminated, they never can offer themselves for my acceptation, but they must encounter my solemn rebuke. '