Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/828

 516 FEDBBAL EBPOBTEB. �The ancient laws of Oleron, Wisby, and the Hanse towns contained no provision on this subject, nor is any alteration of the nile of the oivil law noted by Eoccus; but Vinnius, an earlier author, states that by the law of Holland the owners were not chargeable beyond the value of the ship and the things that are in it. The Hanseatic ordinance of 1614 had already pronounced the goods of the owner discharged from daims for damage by the sale of the ship to pay them ; and in conformity therewith the French ordinance of 1681 de- clared "that the owners of ships shall be answerable for the acts of the master, but shall be discharged therefrom upon relinquishing their ship and the freight." A similar provis- ion in the ordinance of Eotterdam, made in 1721, declares "that the owners shall not be answerable for any act of the master done withçut their order, any further than their part of the ship amounts to;" and by other articles of the same ordinance it appears that each part owner is liable only for the value of his own share. Valen, in his Commentaries on the French Ordinance, informs us that the same regulations were also established at Hamburg. �The earliest provision of the British legislature on this sub- ject is a statuts passed a fewyears after the dateof the ordi- nance of Eotterdam, in consequence of a petition presented to the house of commons by several merchants and other per- sons, owners of ships belonging to the port of London, setting forth the alarm of the petitioners at the event of a late action, in which it was determined that the owners were answerable for the value of the merchandise embezzled by the master. �A ruling of Lord Mansiield, 50 years later, that the own- ers of a vessel, which had been forcibly robbed of a large an}ount of specie in the Thames, were liable for the loss, though one of the mariners w^s accessory to the robbery, suf&ced to alarm the ship-owners of London, and upon another petition to the house of commons a second atatute was passed, extending protection to owners in case of robbery without the privity of the master or mariners, The protec- tion thus acoorded to them was greatly enlarged af terwards by the 63 Geo. IIL c. 159; but these varions statutes were ����