PREFACE. SOME knowledge of the law of Marine Insurance is almost indispensable to a shipowner or merchant, and it is important that that knowledge should be correct so far as it goes. It is true that most shipowners and many merchants sooner or later acquire some such knowledge without the trouble of reading books, from their own experience; but this method of acquiring it is apt to be costly, as the most valuable part of the experience is derived from the consequences of their own mistakes. Hence there has always been a demand for little books like the present, and there has generally been a supply. Stevens on Average, Baily on General Average and the Perils of the Seas, and Hopkins's Handbook of Average and Manual of Marine Insurance, are examples of the kind. All these, like the present volume, were written by average-adjusters,—a class of persons whose peculiar experience gives them great opportunities of at least knowing what is wanted. All these books, however, like law-books on a larger scale, must either be constantly kept up to the level of the latest decisions, or they run the risk of ceasing to be safe guides to the mercantile reader, on account of the rapid growth of law and consequent change of practice (a). The time seems to have come for something new. (a) For example, between the print. ing and the publishing of this volume, there are two fresh decisions. One I have noticed in Appendix E. The other (Rivaz v. Gerussi) in the Court of Appeal, Nov. 19, 1880, establishes that to make untrue declarations of value on a "ship or ships" policy, representing risks which have run off as of less value than they actually were, vitiates a policy on the ground of concealment, or rather of misrepresentation. |