"
And again Judge Story quotes from another case: "The thing is
here primarily considered as the offender, or rather the offence
is primarily attached to the thing." /2/
In other words, those great judges, although of course aware that
a ship is no more alive than a mill-wheel, thought that not only
the law did in fact deal with it as if it were alive, but that it
was reasonable that the law should do so. The reader will observe
that they do not say simply that it is reasonable on grounds of
policy to [30] sacrifice justice to the owner to security for
somebody else but that it is reasonable to deal with the vessel
as an offending thing. Whatever the hidden ground of policy may
be, their thought still clothes itself in personifying language.
Let us now go on to follow the peculiarities of the maritime law
in other directions. For the cases which have been stated are
only parts of a larger whole.
By the maritime law of the Middle Ages the ship was not only the
source, but the limit, of liability. The rule already prevailed,
which has been borrowed and adopted by the English statutes and
by our own act of Congress of 1851, according to which the owner
is discharged from responsibility for wrongful acts of a master
appointed by himself upon surrendering his interest in the vessel
and the freight which she had earned.
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