THEOPHILUS PARSONS, LL.D., DANE PROFESSOR OF LAW IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AT CAMBRIdge. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. UNIVERSITY THE AVERSITY BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1869. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by THEOPHILUS PARSONS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by THEOPHILUS PARSONS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 73053 YTISADVIMU UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. P R E FACСЕ. In my work on Maritime Law, the first volume, and part of the second, related to the Law of Shipping, and the Law and Practice of Admiralty. I have now enlarged them to two volumes, and hope they will be found to include all the many recent important decisions on these subjects. I have not called this work a second edition of the former; as it is not only much enlarged, but upon its most important topics re-written; and it seemed to me more accurate to publish it as a new work. I repeat here the closing paragraphs of the Preface of the former work. "Long ago I had become satisfied, that the boundless. affluence of existing legal authority, and the rapid increase of the reports of English and American courts, and of other repositories of the law, made it with every passing year, more difficult for a lawyer to possess the means of a thorough investigation, and impossible for him to give the time and labor necessary for such investigation to the many questions which arise in practice. I was further convinced, that books might be made in which this labor of investigation should be so thoroughly performed, and the result so given in the text, and the authorization and illustration so put forth in the notes, as in most cases to render further research unnecessary, and to make it much easier when necessary. It is this book that I have endeavored to make. The difficulty of accomplishing such a work was obvious; but it did not seem impossible. I |