INDEX TO VOL. IV. (FOURTH SERIES.) Page COUNTY COURT JURISDICTION, The Proposed Extenson of. CRIMINAL CODE, The New. By B. L. Mosely CRIMINAL LAW Abroad and at Home CROWN, The Treaty-Making Power of the. LAW, On the Amendment of the. By Mr. Commissioner LEGAL FICTIONS: Case of "Angus v. Dalton." By William ... REVIEWS: Annuaire de Législation Etrangère Campbell's (R.) Law of Negligence ... ... ... Churchill and Bruce's Sheriff Law ... Evans's Principal and Agent in Contract and Tort Foot's Highway Acts ... ... 468 378 II2 III 116 380 460 ... 467 Foote's Private International Law Foreign Legal Reviews .... 222 Foster on Joint Ownership and Partition Godefroi's Law of Trusts Gray's Under the Red Ensign ... ... Haynes's Student's Leading Cases ... Key and Elphinstone's Conveyancing ... ... ... ... Perkins's Dixon's Law of the Farm (4th Ed.) Pound's Law of British Guiana Sandars's Justinian (6th Ed.) Scottish. By Hugh Barclay, LL.D. ... 470 ... 113 THE LAW MAGAZINE AND REVIEW. No. CCXXX.-NOVEMBER, 1878. I.-COLLISIONS AT SEA: A SCHEME OF INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS. THE HE application of steam-power to sea-going vessels has worked so great a change in the conditions of ocean navigation as to render it necessary for nations to concert a common system of rules for the navigation of vessels on the high seas, with a view to prevent accidents from collision. It is obvious that the two ancient cardinal rules of navigation, which had hitherto sufficed for the guidance of sailing vessels on the high seas, namely, that vessels going free should give way to vessels on a wind, and that the vessel on the port tack should always give way to the vessel on the starboard tack, are insufficient for the safe guidance of vessels navigated under steam-power, and not under sail. Although the same principles of navigation might still be properly maintained in the case of steamers, where applicable, it has been found requisite that the rules of navigation should be extended to other cases, seeing that the course of steamers is not governed exclusively by the wind, and that a steam vessel is enabled by a skilful use of her steam-power to manœuvre in a manner which is impracticable for a sailing vessel. Great Britain was amongst the leading states to set the example. She commenced by laying down formal rules for the navigation of steam vessels on her own rivers, and after some experience, extended the rules to her own steam vessels on the Ι high seas, and she included her sailing vessels under a reciprocal system of obligation when approaching steam vessels. British Admiralty Courts were also authorised by British statute law to regulate their judgments in cases of collision between British vessels on the high seas in accordance with the new rules. In due course of time, after experience had given its sanction to those rules, Great Britain entered into treaty arrangements with foreign powers, that their vessels should be navigated on the high seas under the same system of rules, and she has authorised her Admiralty Courts to apply the new rules to every vessel whose flag has been brought, with the consent of its Government, within the operation of the new rules. Cases of collision on the high seas have thus been brought by a common international concert under a new system of law, which has been built up on the lines. of the ancient customs of the sea as far as possible, the steam vessel being regarded as a vessel going free, and able to get out of the way of a sailing vessel, more readily than a sailing vessel can get out of the way of a steam vessel. It is not proposed, on the present occasion, to discuss the details of the International Sailing Rules. Modifications have had to be made in them from time to time to meet new difficulties which experience has discovered, and such modifications have been the result of a common concert between the maritime powers. Our object at present is to consider how the observance of the sailing rules on the high seas can be best secured, and how the neglect of them, if it be the result of carelessness or of wilfulness, may be most effectively punished. Under the ancient law of the sea, every collision on the high seas may be the subject of a civil action for damages in any Admiralty Court; but however culpable may have been the conduct of those in charge of either vessel, British Admiralty Courts, which exercise their civil jurisdiction indiscriminately between vessels of all nations, care |