Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/576

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Commissioners arrived at the conclusion that they ought not to recommend any alteration of the law with regard to valued policies in cases of total loss, as there were weighty reasons against any interference on the part of the Legislature with contracts made by persons capable of taking care of their own interests, without carefully ascertaining the effect this interference was likely to produce on the entire system of law relating to such contracts. But they were of opinion that the "whole system of insurance law requires complete revision, for not only does it allow the assured, in some cases, to recover more than the amount of the loss actually sustained by him, but it also, on the other hand, deprives him of an indemnity in cases in which he ought to be protected by his insurance."

The Commissioners, however, with great force, remark, that "a complete and thorough revision of our laws relating to marine insurance is a task of equal importance, difficulty, and delicacy, requiring evidence of an extensive character, and necessitating a very lengthy and careful investigation, and it touches directly on so many subjects unconnected with the security of life at sea, on which it has only an indirect and somewhat remote bearing, that we do not think it properly falls within the scope of our commission. We should also have been reluctant to undertake the complete revision of our system of marine insurance law, because, for many reasons, it appears to us to be important that, before such a task is undertaken, an attempt should be made to induce foreign nations to concur with us in framing and adopting a general code of insurance law. To alter