A

TREATISE

ON THE

LAW OF MARINE INSURANCE

AND

GENERAL AVERAGE.

BY

THEOPHILUS PARSONS, LL.D.,

DANE PROFESSOR OF LAW IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AT CAMBRIDGE.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

1868.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by

THEOPHILUS PARSONS,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

Or my treatise on Maritime Law, the first volume contained the Law of Shipping. The second volume contained the Law of Marine Insurance, and the Law of Admiralty. In preparing a new edition of this work, I found that the recent cases on the subject of Marine Insurance, and especially those on General Average in connection with Insurance, in England and in this country, from their number, their interest, and their effect upon those important branches of Commercial Law, made it impossible to confine the work within its former limits. I determined, therefore, after much consultation with persons in different parts of our country whose opinions on such a question would be most valuable, to prepare a new work on the Law of Marine Insurance, founding it upon my former work, but so increasing its size as to enable me to make it as complete as I could. The result is the book now offered the public.

I have adhered in this work to the method which I have heretofore pursued; that is, in my text I have stated the principles of law, giving cases only where I thought I could present or illustrate those principles better by their help than otherwise, while, in my notes I have referred to every case bearing with any force upon the statements in the text, and have given full abstracts of, or copious extracts from, the leading authorities. I began writing upon this system many years ago, in