It would seem that a similar form of words has been enough to satisfy the minds of great lawyers.  The following is a passage from a judgment by Chief Justice Marshall, which is quoted with approval by Judge Story in giving the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States:  “This is not a proceeding against the owner; it is a proceeding against the vessel for an offence committed by the vessel; which is not the less an offence, and does not the less subject her to forfeiture, because it was committed without the authority and against the will of the owner.  It is true that inanimate matter can commit no offence.  But this body is animated and put in action by the crew, who are guided by the master.  The vessel acts and speaks by the master.  She reports herself by the master.  It is, therefore, not unreasonable that the vessel should be affected by this report.”  And again Judge Story quotes from another case:  “The thing is here primarily considered as the offender, or rather the offence is primarily attached to the thing.” 2

In other words, those great judges, although of course aware that a ship is no more alive than a mill-wheel, thought that not only the law did in fact deal with it as if it were alive, but that it was reasonable that the law should do so.  The reader will observe that they do not say simply that it is reasonable on grounds of policy to [30] sacrifice justice to the owner to security for somebody else but that it is reasonable to deal with the vessel as an offending thing.  Whatever the hidden ground of policy may be, their thought still clothes itself in personifying language.

Let us now go on to follow the peculiarities of the maritime law in other directions.  For the cases which have been stated are only parts of a larger whole.

By the maritime law of the Middle Ages the ship was not only the source, but the limit, of liability.  The rule already prevailed, which has been borrowed and adopted by the English statutes and by our own act of Congress of 1851, according to which the owner is discharged from responsibility for wrongful acts of a master appointed by himself upon surrendering his interest in the vessel and the freight which she had earned.  By the doctrines of agency he would be personally liable for the whole damage.  If the origin of the system of limited liability which is believed to be so essential to modern commerce is to be attributed to those considerations of public policy on which it would now be sustained, that system has nothing to do with the law of collision.  But if the limit of liability here stands on the same ground as the noxoe deditio, confirms the explanation already given of the liability of the ship for wrongs done by it while out of the owner’s hands, and conversely existence of that liability confirms the argument here.