Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/630

 618 FEDERAL REPORTER. �of its being a regulation of commerce, as an act prescribing and limiting the remedies to be enjoyed by suitora in the admiralty courts of the United States. Whether it can, under the same clauses of the constitution, be justified as the exer- cise by congress of a general power to change the maritime law of the United States, it is unnecessary in this case to determine. �Corning, then, to the question of the actual construction to be given to this statuts, the question is ■whether it is to be held to be merely a regulation of commerce, interstate and foreign. There is nothing in the act itself, it seems to me, that indicates that it was intended by congress to be so re- stricted in its operation. The cases excepted out of its oper- ation — "any canal-boat, barge, lighter, or any vessel of any description whatsoever,used on rivers or inland navigation" — are not cases of vessels engaged exclusively in commerce of a single state. It has been held that vessels navigating the great lakes are not within the exception. Moore v. Nav. Co. 24 How. 1. So far as the exception indicates a general pur- pose tp distinguish between different waters, as those within and those without the operation of the act, the line is drawn between the external waters of the country, the sea and bod- ies of waters so vast as to be like the sea for purposes of navigation, and their immediately-connected waters on the one hand, and strictly fluvial or interior waters on the other h and, or between waters adapted to sea-going vessels and waters not so adapted. ihat the waters of Long Island sound are not within the exception is too plain on authority and on the rea- son of the thing to admit of discussion. Moore v. Nav. Co. ut supra; The Epilsoii, ut supra; Norwich Co. v. Wright, ut supra. This exception, so far as it has any bearing on the intention as to the general operation of the act, seems to me to indicate that the purpose was to extend the act to ail external waters, and to ail sea-going vessels navigating them, to which the power of congress to legislate in this respect extended. The maxim expressio unius, exclusio alterius ap- plies. As the terms of the act purport to extend generally •to ail vessels navigating the navigable waters of the United ����