Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/631

 IN BE LONG IëLAND, ETC., TBANSPOBTATION 00. 619 �States, and an express exception is made of certain vessels navigating certain of those waters, the inference is proper that no other vessels navigating the waters not excepted were intended to be excepted out of the act. If, indeed, there were any strong reason or settled poliey of the governmeat for excluding vessels running between port and port of the same state, such further exception might be implied. But there seems to be no such reason or settled poliey. Why do not the same considerations which make the law .just and right, as applied to a vessel running between New York and Stonington, or between Boston and Portland, make it also just and right as applied to a vessel running between New York and Sag Harbor, or between Boston and Provicetown, or Nantucket ; assuming, of course, that congress has equal power in both cases ? That the act was not intended to except vessels trading exclusively between ports of the same state, if, in their voyages, they passed beyond the territorial limits of the state, has been now conclusively determined by the supreme court. Lord v. Steam-ship Co. ut supra, I think no suf&cient reason exista for such discrimination, and that there is no reason of public poliey which should, with- out an expressed exception, exclude vessels running between ports of a single state from the beneficiai operation of this rule of damages, and this restriction of. remedies thus adopted by congress for the govemment of the admiralty coui:ts of the United States, nor from the operation of this newly-adopted rule of the maritime law, if the statute can take efl'ect as the adoption of a new rule of the maritime law. �Uniformity in the maritime law is one of its peculiar char- teristics, — one of the things which makes it most beneficent in its operation; and the great benefits to resuit from such uni- formity in the maritime law, as administered in the courts of the Union, was one of the inducements to the adoption of the constitution, and the controUing reason for conferring oh the general govemment the exclusive jurisdiction of ail admiralty and maritime causes, — as well thôse arising in the com- merce of the state on navigable waters as those arising in Interstate and foreign commerce. It is true that it has ����