Jackson et al. v. Steamboat Magnolia.

which provided for such cases on the lakes, and navigable waters connected with them, in the same manner as if the same vessels had been employed in navigating the high seas or on tide-waters within the admiralty jurisdiction, with a proviso that all the issues of fact might be tried by a jury.

The court decided that the act was not a regulation of commerce between the States, and that the jurisdiction conferred on the District Court could not be sustained as a regulation of commerce among the States, and that the judicial power of the United States could not be extended by such legislation. The court, after this sound constitutional argument, proceed to say: "If the meaning of these terms in the Constitution was now for the first time brought before this court, there could, we think, be no hesitation in saying that the lakes and their connecting waters were embraced in them. These lakes are, in truth, inland seas. Different States border on them on one side, and a foreign nation on the other; a great and growing commerce between different States and a foreign nation, which is subject to all the incidents and hazards that attend commerce on the ocean. Hostile fleets have encountered in them, and prizes have been made; and every reason which exists for the grant of admiralty jurisdiction to the General Government on the Atlantic seas, applies with equal force to the lakes. There is an equal necessity for the instance power, and for the prize power of the admiralty court to administer admiralty law; and if the one cannot be established, neither can be the other."

All the considerations mentioned in this argument applied to the Mississippi river in 1789, and some of them do at this time.

I have stated the entire argument of the court upon the precise question, whether the court had jurisdiction of the cause for damage in that locality. The court say, The court say, "the only objection made to the jurisdiction is, that there is no tide in the lakes, or the waters connecting them; and it is said that the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, as known and understood in England and this country at the time the Constitution was adopted, was confined to the ebb and flow of the tide." The Chief Justice combats this objection to the jurisdiction of the court in that cause, and pronounces for the court that tide does not form the criterion of jurisdiction. In my opinion, the argument of the court in favor of jurisdiction is imposing; and also that the objection taken by the appellants, as reported in the opinion, does not embody the strength of the objection to the jurisdiction. To ascertain the scope of the opinion, it is necessary to examine the argument of the court, and the worth of the objection taken to the jurisdiction and combated.

Jackson et al. v. Steamboat Magnolia.

The lakes are certainly not seas according to the sig nification of that word in the law of nations or the Admiral's commission. They are not common highways for all nations, open to the ships of all, and exempted from the municipal regulation and control of any. The sovereignty over them belongs to the riparian proprietors, in the same manner as over the Rhine or Rio Grande rivers; and the American States and British Queen have respectively courts to administer their laws within the limits of their several titles, to the middle of the lakes, against those who may offend against them. The jurisdiction of the court of admiralty cannot be supported upon the lakes as seas. But the lakes form an external maritime boundary of the United States, and are a commercial highway, which by treaty is common to the inhabitants of the two maritime and commercial countries whose possessions border them. The commerce of these countries is great and growing, and exposed to depredation; and in the absence of a navy, and without defined boundaries, the police of the States on this exposed frontier may be inefficient for the protection of the interests of the Union. I shall not inquire whether these considerations, or those among them which are applicable to the river Mississippi, authorized the decisions in the Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh, 12 How.; and Fritz v. Bull, 12 How., 466; Walsh v. Rogers, 13 How., 283. I have yielded to the principle of stare decisis, and have applied the decisions as I found them when I came into this court. But not one of these considerations has any application to the case before this court. The Alabama river is not an inland sea. Its navigation was not open to a single foreign vessel when this collision took place. No port had been established on it by the authority of Congress. The commerce that passes over it consists mainly of the products of the State, and the objects received in exchange, at the only seaport of the State. For its whole length it is subject to the same State Government, and its police does not involve a necessity for a navy.

The objection noticed in the opinion of the court in the Genesee Chief, as opposed in the argument against the jurisdiction of the court, I have said does not meet the force of the adversary opinion. In France, the domain of the Admiral was limted to the sea, its coasts, ports, havens, and shores to the highwater mark, and his seignoral right to dispense justice was confined to his domain. The contest there was as to the extent of rival seignories. But in Great Britain the contest had a more profound significance than is to be found in a contro versy merely between rival feudatories.

The Admiral's jurisdiction there had no relation to the salt

Jackson et al. v. Steamboat Magnolia.

ness or freshness of the waters, nor whether the rivers were public or private, navigable or floatable. The question was, whether Englishmen should be governed by English laws, or "whether contracts, pleas, and quarrels, should be drawn ad aliud examen, and be sentenced per aliam legem." The English Commons abhorred the summary jurisdiction of the courts of civil law, their private examination of witnesses, their rejection of a jury of the vicinage, the discretion they allowed to the judge, and their foreign code. They erected a barrier of penal statutes to exclude them from the body of any county, either on land or water.

The people of the several States have retained the popular element of the judicial administration of England, and the attachment of her people to the institutions of local self-government. In Alabama, the "trial by jury is preserved inviolate," that being regarded as "an essential principle of liberty and free government." In the court of admiralty the people have no place as jurors. A single judge, deriving his appointment from an independent Government, administers in that court a code which a Federal judge has described as "resting upon the general principles of maritime law, and that it is not competent to the States, by any local legislation, to enlarge, or limit, or narrow it." (2 Story R., 456.)

If the principle of this decree is carried to its logical extent, all cases arising in the transportation of property or persons from the towns and landing-places of the different States, to other towns and landing-places, whether in or out of the State; all cases of tort or damage arising in the navigation of the internal waters, whether involving the security of persons or title to property, in either; all cases of supply to those engaged in the navigation, not to enumerate others, will be cognizable in the District Courts of the United States. If the dogma of judges in regard to the system of laws to be administered prevails, then this whole class of cases may be drawn ad aliud examen, and placed under the dominion of a foreign code, whether they arise among citizens or others. The States are deprived of the power to mould their own laws in respect of persons and things within their limits, and which are appropriately subject to their sovereignty. The right of the people to self-government is thus abridged-abridged to the precise extent, that a judge appointed by another Government may impose a law, not sanctioned by the representatives or agents of the people, upon the citizens of the State. Thus the contest here assumes the same significance as in Great Britain, and, in its last analysis, involves the question of the right of the people to determine their own laws and legal institutions. And surely this objec

Jackson et al. v. Steamboat Magnolia.

tion to the decree is independent of any consideration whether the river is subject to tides, or is navigable from the sea.

This decree derives no strength from the legislation of Congress, but a strong argument is to be deduced from the act of 1845 in opposition to it. The learned author of the opinion in Delovio v. Boit, and in the case of the Thomas Jefferson, (Justice Story,) has the reputation of being the author of the act. He proposed to bring under the judicial administration of the United States, cases that did not belong to the jurisdiction of the admiralty under the authoritative exposition of the Constitution by this court. The first suggestion of the feasibility of such a law is to be found in the opinion given in the case of the Thomas Jefferson, in 1825, and is enough to relieve this court from the imputation of having decided that case without a proper appreciation of the magnitude of the question.

The act of 1845 involves the admission, that cases arising on waters within the limits of the United States other than tidewaters were cases at common law, and that a jury, under the seventh amendment of the Constitution, must be preserved. It was framed on the hypothesis that Congress might increase the judicial power of the United States, so as to comprise all cases arising on, or which related to, any subject to which its legislation extended. It is apparent that this court in 1847, and afterwards in 1848, when the suits of Waring v. Clark, and the New Jersey Navigation Co. v. The Merchants' Bank, were so elaborately discussed, were wholly unconscious of the fact that this act contained a recognition of any jurisdiction in admiralty, additional to what had been previously exercised.

The only inference that can be drawn properly from the act of 1845, in my opinion, is, that Congress recognised the limit that the decisions in the earlier cases in this court had established for the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, and its own incapacity to confer a more enlarged jurisdiction of that kind.

I have performed my duty, in my opinion, in expressing at large my convictions on the subject of the powers of the courts of the United States under the clause of the Constitution I have considered.

There have been cases, since I came into this court, involving the jurisdiction of the court on the seas and their tidewaters, the lakes, and the Mississippi river. I have applied the law as settled in previous decisions, in deference to the principle of stare decisis, without opposing any objectionthough in a portion of those decisions the reasons of the court did not satisfy my own judgment. I consider that the present case carries the jurisdiction to an incalculable extent beyond any other, and all others, that have heretofore been pronounced,

Goodman v. Simonds.

and that it must create a revolution in the admiralty adminis tration of the courts of the United States; that the change will produce heart-burning and discontent, and involve collisions with State Legislatures and State jurisdictions. And, finally, it is a violation of the rights reserved in the Constitution of the United States to the States and the people.

TIMOTHY S. GOODMAN, PLAINTIFF IN ERROR, v. JOHN SIMONDS Where an accepted and endorsed bill of exchange was placed by the drawer as collateral security for his own debt in the hands of his creditor, and when the creditor came to sue the acceptor, the court instructed the jury, "that if such facts and circumstances were known to the plaintiff as caused him to suspect or that would have caused one of ordinary prudence to suspect, that the drawer had no interest in the bill, and no authority to use the same for his own benefit, and by ordinary diligence he could have ascertained these facts," then the jury would find for the defendant-this instruction was erroneous.

The facts of the case examined, to ascertain whether or not there was sufficient evidence to go to the jury upon these points.

This court again says, that a bona fide holder of a negotiable instrument for a valuable consideration, without notice of facts which impeach its validity between the antecedent parties, if he takes it under an endorsement made before the same becomes due, holds the title unaffected by these facts, and may recover thereon, although as between the antecedent parties the transaction may be without any legal validity.

Where a party is in possession of a negotiable instrument, the presumption is that he holds it for value, and the burden of proof is upon him who disputes it; an exception being where the defect appears on the face of the instrument.

It is a question of fact for the jury, whether or not the holder had knowledge of defects existing antecedently to the transfer to him.

The English and American cases examined.

Surrendering collateral securities previously given, and affording increased indulgence as to time, furnish a sufficient consideration for the transfer of new collaterals.

THIS case was brought up, by writ of error, from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Missouri.

Goodman was a citizen of Ohio, and Simonds of Missouri. The suit was brought by Goodman, upon the following bill of exchange:

EXCHANGE FOR $5,000.

CINCINNATI, O., Sept. 12, 1847. Four months after date of this, my first of exchange, (second unpaid,) pay to the order of John Sigerson five thousand dol lars, value received, and charge the same to account.

Your ob't serv't,

Mr. John Simonds, St. Louis, Mo.

WALLACE SIGERSON.

Upon the face of the bill was written, "Accepted, John Simonds:" and endorsed upon the same was the following.