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 LAW MERCHANT 219 distances. The reasons for this are obvious, and may be discerned the more easily because they have not yet ceased wholly to operate. The common law was, at a very early period, a complicated but well arranged and exceedingly systematic body of law. To know this was the privilege of a few ; to administer it gave wealth and dignity to a very few. The law was then a monopoly, and one of very great value, and it was guarded carefully by those who possessed it. But merchants were com- pelled to find, or to invent, for the various exigencies of their commerce, rules and prin- ciples different from those which had grown out of the feudal system, and were intended mainly to govern titles to land and the rela- tions of feudal rank. When these mercantile contracts came before the courts, the same ne- cessity which had led merchants to find and introduce their new rules, acted upon the courts, and induced the courts, more or less willingly, to accept these rules as their rules also, and thus to make them law. But while some of these rules were only modifications of the existing rules of the common law, others of them were very distinct exceptions, and some were positive contradictions. It was perhaps wise in the courts to regard with jeal- ousy rules of law made by no sovereign au- thority, and neither evidenced nor promulgated in any authentic way ; and indeed at all times the established rules which governed the busi- ness and the contracts of any set of men must have been recognized as law; and even the Roman civil law acknowledged the binding force of mercantile usage as constituting law. One instance (Digest, L. 14, tit. 2, sec. 9) will show this regard to usage. In the reign of the emperor Antoninus a vessel had been wrecked ; a part of her cargo had been thrown over to lighten her, and by this loss the vessel and the remainder of the cargo were saved, and the owner of the property demanded a contribution from the others. Many centuries before this time the merchants and navigators of the Medi- terranean had formed a code of laws for their own government, and as it was agreed upon at and promulgated from the island of Rhodes, then a principal centre of commerce, it was known as the Rhodian law. By this law, the claimant would be entitled to contribution un- der a principle which has come down to our own times, and is now in full force under the name of general average. The claim of the owner of the property lost was submitted to the emperor, and the rescript, or decree, was as follows : "I, indeed, am lord of the earth ; but the law (or this law) is the lord of the sea. Whatever the Rhodian law prescribes in the premises, let that be adjudged." The very next rubric makes the ship owner responsible for the acts of the master of his ship. Another (Dig. 4, 9) provides that mariners and certain others shall be responsible for all property committed to their charge. Another (Dig. 22, 2 ; Code, 4, ~T) gives rules which are quite the same with those that regulate at this day loans on bottom- ry and respondentia. And another (Dig. 47, 9) provides that fourfold damages should be paid by the plunderer of a vessel in distress. These provisions of the Roman law, with the remains of the law of Rhodes, sufficed for the purposes of commerce until about eight centuries since, when the Consolato del mare was promulgated. It is an excellently constructed system, constant- ly referred to by law writers of continental Europe at this day, and in some instances men- tioned by English and American judges. The origin of this code is not certainly known, nor the name of its authors, nor the time or place of its original promulgation. Next to the Con- solato in time, according to the best author- ities, came the "Laws of O16ron." We know that these were collected, reduced to systematic form, and published, as the rules then in force for the regulation of shipping, in the small isl- and of Oleron, off the coast of France. Queen Eleanor was duchess of the province of Gui- enne, near^which Oleron lies, and French wri- ters assert that she caused the preparation and publication of this code. English antiquaries refer it to her son Richard I. But no one cer- tainly knows who was their author, or when they were first in force. This code has been repeatedly published in English, and is most accessible to American students in the first vol- ume of Peters's "Admiralty Reports." Then followed the "Laws of Wisby." This was the name of a convenient port on the W. coast of Gothland, an island in the Baltic, about equidis- tant from Sweden, Russia, and Germany, and once the emporium of a great commerce. These laws were probably founded upon the laws of Oleron, with which they frequently coincide. A French work called Le guidon, and often referred to under that name (the author being unknown), was published about three centu- ries since. Its whole title, translated into Eng- lish, is: "A Useful and Necessary Guide to them who deal in Merchandise and send it to Sea," And then we reach the Ordonnance de la marine of Louis XIV., published in 1681. It covers the whole ground of maritime law, including insurance. It codifies and systema- tizes with great skill all existing provisions, whether they were derived from enactment or from usage, and in many instances improves upon them. Chancellor Kent calls this ordi- nance "a monument of the wisdom of his reign, far more durable and more glorious than all the military trophies won by the valor of his armies." Passing now over to England, we find even in Magna Charta (1215) a section running thus : " All merchants shall have safe and secure conduct to go out of and to come into England and to stay there, and to pass as well by land as by water, to buy and sell by the ancient and allowed customs, without any heavy tolls, except in time of war, or when they shall be of any nation at war with us." And the next section defines the rights of alien merchants in time of war. In subsequent