"The first principles of jurisprudence are simple maxims of reason, of which the observance is immediately
diservered by experience to be essential to the security of men's rights, and which pervade the laws of all
countries. An account of the gradual application of these criginal principles, first to more simple, and after-
wards to more complicated cases, forms both the history and theory of law."... Sir James Mackintosh,

BOSTON:

CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN.

LONDON:

STEVENS AND NORTON,

194 Fleet Street.

M DCCC XLIX.

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1849,

BY JOSEPH K. ANGELL,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Rhode Island.

BOSTON:

THURSTON, TORRY & EMERSON,

31 Devonshire Street.

PREFACE.

Ir is not thought requisite to tender an elaborate apology for presenting to the public a work upon a subject of so great importance as the Law of Carriers of Goods and Passengers, as it is believed that it must with the public be a desideratum, that a subject of jurisprudence so practical as this, and one so intimately connected with the common and daily concerns of life, should not only be settled as precisely and as uniformly as possible, but should be generally understood. The annals of navigation and commerce, and the records of commercial jurisprudence, attest the importance of the law of common carriers by land and by water, and it is doubted if there is any other branch of this department of jurisprudence which so naturally tends to awaken a desire in the community at large to become enlightened in relation to it. But since the commencement of the present century, and more especially since American inventive genius has rendered the accelerative and reliable agency of Steam subservient to the transportation of commodities and of travellers, the legal duties, liabilities and rights of public carriers of both things and persons, have become subjects of vastly more interest and greater moment, than