Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/626

 614 FEDERAL REPORTBE. �Tlius it is suggested, in the case of The Lottawanna, that con- gress might, by law, adopt as a uniform rule for the whole country that rule of the general maritime law that material men shall have a lien for materials and supplies furnished to a vessel in its home port. The Lottawanna, 21 Wall. 577. The court in the same case also say : "Perhaps the maritime law is more uniformly followed by the commercial nations than the civil and common laws are by those who use them. But like those laws, however fixed, definite, and beneficiai the theoretical code of maritime law may be. it can bave only so far the effect of law in any country as it is permitted to have. But the actual maritime law can hardly be said to have a fixed and definite form as to ail the subjects which may be embraced within its scope. Whilst it is true that the great mass of maritime law is the same in ail commercial countries, yet in each country peeuliarities exist either as to some of the rules, or in the mode of enforcing them. * * * No one doubts that every nation may adopt its own maritime code. France may adopt one, England another, the United States a third ; still the convenienceof the commercial world, bound together as it is by mutual relations of trade and intercourse, demands that in ail essential things wherein those relations bring them in contact, there should be a uni- form law founded on natural reason and justice. Hence the adoption by ail commercial nations (our own included) of the general maritime law as the basis and groundwork of ail their maritime regulations. But no nation regards itself as pre- cluded from making occasional modifications suited to its locality and the genius of its own people and institutions, espeeially in matters that are of merely local and municipal consequence, and do not affect other nations. * * * Eaeh state adopts the maritime law, not as a code having any independent or inherent force proprio vigore, but as its own law, with such modifications and qualifications as it sees fit. Thus adopted and thus qualified in each case, it becomes the mari- time law of the particular nation that adopts it. And with- out such voluntary adoption it would not be the law. And thus it happens that from the general practice of commercial ����