PREFACE. THE importance of any department of law is in direct proportion to the importance of the interests affected by its rules. The relative importance of various legal questions has consequently varied with the varying conditions of progressive civilization. The real-property law of this country is a museum of useless rules and regulations which, although admirable in their day, have as little meaning in these new times as the flint arrow-heads which are found in our bogs and marshes. We see a reflected history of the past in the laws which were dictated by the necessities of the time, just as we can trace the tides of the sea which has retreated from some coast, by the breakwater which was at one time necessary to prevent its encroachments. The old feeling, which was natural in lawless times, that real property was a much more eligible possession than property in chattels, has to some extent passed away before the inexorable facts of industrial times; but the respect which is still given to the owners of land is perhaps to be traced, as to its roots, to the feelings of that earlier and less civilized period. Now, however, the law in its relation to personal property, although it may have less historical interest, is not less important in the eyes of lawyers than that which has The movable property of this reference to property in land. country is at the present time of infinitely more value than the immovable; and as it is in the hands of a much larger number of proprietors, the interests affected by the laws relating to personal property are certainly not less important than those which have reference to real property. But our personal property has, owing to the conditions of the period, become more movable than it was in times past. We are a commercial as well as an industrial people, and the more our manufactures increase, the more our commerce extends. The laws of action and reaction are visible in the vital phenomena of trade. Industry has not only increased the amount of traffic, but traffic has increased the amount of industry. Rapid means of conveyance have localized industries in those places which were most favorable for their advantageous prosecution, and this large-scale division of labor (large-scale because it is not only a division of employments among individuals but among cities and countries) has in its turn reacted upon traffic. At the present time, therefore, our property is valuable by reason of its very movable character. As a money system is more excellent than a system of barter, because of the possibility of currency, so personal property has become more valuable in these days by reason of the facilities for exchange. And the tendency of our times is still further to divide the labor of the country, and consequently to make a still more extensive use of the means of trade conveyance. Hence the importance of the law of carriers. These circumstances will indicate why the subject dealt with in this treatise has more importance now than it had in times gone by, and may serve to explain the reasons which induced the author to enter upon the task of writing it so soon after the publication of Messrs. Chitty and Temple's able work upon the Law of Carriers. Although it seems a short time since the publication of that work, it is not really a short time to a lawyer, who must judge of the necessity of a restatement of the law, not by the number of years since the publication of the last work, but by the number of cases which have been decided, or rather, to look at the subject with a deeper internal reference, to the number of important principles which have received illustration and elucidation since the publication of the previous text-book. This leads the author naturally to speak of what might seem a defect in the following treatise, but which to him appears a positive merit. Some parts of the subject have received a greater amount of attention than others, and while every important question connected with the law of carriers has been alluded to, many have been much more fully treated than others, and that because the author found that the statement of the law contained in other text-books was sufficiently adequate in relation to certain rules, and could have done little more than transfer the statements contained in these to the pages of his own work. He was unwilling to do this, and he therefore left most of those portions of his subject which were adequately treated in other works with a less full exposition in his own, while he bestowed greater attention upon those questions which had received inadequate answers in other books upon the same department of law. The author does not wish his book to seem to enter into competition with Mr. Angell's admirable work upon the Law of Carriers. That useful text-book must still be of service to the English practitioner, and invaluable to the American lawyer. In many connections, however, the text of that work cannot be regarded as an efficient statement of the law of England as it at present stands, and some subjects which must in future be of paramount importance in the eyes of English lawyers, are only alluded to. That being so, the work can never be all in all to the lawyer who has to practise in relation to English courts, and consequently there is still some necessity for a work on the law of carriers. But any treatise on the law in its relations to conveyance, written at the present time, would be wanting in a great excellence which Mr. Angell's work possesses, unless it contained references to cases decided in the United States. The author has to express his deep sense of the obligation which he owes to his friend Mr. James P. Aspinall, of the Midland Circuit, for his careful revision of the manuscript of the first part of this work, and for the advice and assistance which he has afforded with reference to those portions which are devoted to questions of freight and shipping. He has also great pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness to his friends, Mr. Henry F. Makins and Mr. Lewis E. Glyn, both of the Home Circuit: the former, for his kindness in revising many of the proofs and correcting many inaccuracies; the latter, for the compilation of the Appendix of Pleadings, which will, he doubts not, be of the greatest service to the reader or practitioner. 5 ESSEX COURt, Temple, Oct. 23, 1872. OF THE COMMON-LAW DUTY OF COMMON CARRIERS TO RE- CHAPTER VI. OF THE COMMON-LAW DUTY OF COMMON CARRIERS TO CON- CHAPTER VII. OF THE LIMITED RESPONSIBILITY OF COMMON CARRIERS. PAGE 1 15 34 67 147 162 190 |