Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/334

 320 11. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S Modern legislation has restored to the court of Adrairaltj' many of the powers, and much of the jurisdiction of which it had been deprived in the 17th century.^ It has been re- stored, as we have seen, to its ancient position of a court of record; and its judge has been given the powers possessed by the judges of the superior Courts of Common Law. It has been given jurisdiction in cases of salvage, bottomry, damage, towage, goods supplied to foreign ships, building, equipping, and repairing ships, disputes between co-owners. In addi- tion, it has been given a new jurisdiction in the case of booty of war, if the crown sees fit to refer any such question to it, and a new jurisdiction under the Foreign Enlistment Act.^ But the contests of the 17th century have left their mark upon the law administered by the court. The Common Law Courts often came to decisions, similar to those which the Admiralty had already given, upon the principles of the civil law. But the decisions, though the same in substance, were the decisions of English courts and enunciated rules of English law. The law administered by the court of Ad- miralty possesses, it is true, affinities with the maritime law of foreign countries. The law of Oleron, and other maritime codes, may still be usefully cited in English courts. But Admiralty law has lost the international character which it once possessed. It is essentially English law. " The law which is administered in the Admiralty Court of England is the English maritime law. It is not the ordinary municipal law of the country, but it is the law which the English Court of Admiralty, either by Act of Parliament or by reiterated decisions and traditions and principles, has adopted as the English maritime law." ^ " Neither the laws of the Rhodians, nor of Oleron, nor of Wisby, nor of the Hanse Towns, are of themselves any part of the Admiralty law of England. . . . But they contain many principles and statements of marine practice, which, together with principles found in the Digest, and In the French, and other ordinances, were used by the judges of the English Court of Admiralty, when they were ^3, 4 Vict. c. 65; 13, 14 Vict. c. 26; 24 Vict. c. 10. •The Gaetano and Maria (1882) L. R. 7 P. D. at p. 143.
 * 3, 4 Vict. c. 65 §22; 33, 34 Vict. c. 90 § 19.