MARINE INSURANCE may fairly lay claim to the premier position amongst the many different classes of insurance now in vogue. Upon at least two grounds it may base this claim : its age, and the universal precision with which its principles have developed. As to its age there is no doubt whatever hat that it is the original application of the principle of insurance. Dut this merely relative recognition has scarcely been sufficient for the many authorities who have devoted their enthusiastic attention to this subject, and especially the writers of from one to three centuries ago. The intimate connection of marine insurance with commerce since certainly the fifteenth century would seem to have predisposed them, as a rule, to discover its origin in the beginnings of commerce itself. Assuming such a predisposition, it is not surprising to find that the practice of marine insurance has been attributed to the Romans and even to the Greeks. For this, however, there is little reason. Certainly, by straining a point, it may be contended—as did the old merchant Gerard de Malynes—that the emperor Claudius became an underwriter when, in a period of scarcity at Rome and in order to encourage the importation of corn, he took upon himself all the loss or damage it might sustain in the voyage thither by storm and tempest. But as against this there is the overwhelming fact that nowhere in the legal or general literature of Rome is any direct reference made to marine insurance. And if it had, in fact, been in vogue in connection with the maritime commerce of the Levant at the period of the Rhodian laws, there is again no direct evidence of the fact. For a long time it was assumed that Bruges, in the thirteenth century, was the scene of the introduction of marine insurance. But this, too, was an assumption of doubtful value, especially when it is remembered that the earliest known Flemish policy expressly stated that it was based upon the form used in London. The claim of the latter city may also be dismissed, though there is good reason to believe that London was associated with the early days of marine insurance from the time of the Lombard incursion. The oldest London policy now in existence is, curiously enough, one effected upon " the good Shipp called the Tiger" in 1613, a ship believed to be identical with that one referred to by Shakespeare in Macbeth and Twelflh Night. In a statute of Elizabeth, marine
insurance is declared to have existed " time out of mind." This statute created a special C'ourt of Policies of Insurance, but, after a precarious existence of about a century, it disappeared as a consequence of the (7onimon law Courts refusing to recognise the finality of its judgments. The Common law Courts, especially under the regime of Lord :Mansfield, then most effectually began to carry out the principle of the old statute. No longer were the Common law rules and forms adhered to and applied with the old obstinacy and rigidity. The peculiar characteristics and usages of commercial practice gradually became embodied in the general law, anti in aid of them were introduced the bvst and most apropos features of the Roman, French, and general maritime laws and customs. And in these latter will probably be found the surest indication of the country most entitled to the original credit of marine insurance. Spain is certainly so entitled. In the fifteenth century there were settled and developed in that country the oldest codes or collections of laws and customs relating to marine insurance. These codes are the four Ordinances of Barcelona, 1434 to 1484. Following Barcelona, but in the sixteenth century, are the Ordinances of Florence, Burgos, and Bilbao, and Le Guidon de la Mer of Rouen. And in the seventeenth century are the Ordinances of Middleburg and Rotterdam, the Us et Coutoumes de la Mer, and " one of the most perfect achievements in codification ever accomplished, the production of a genius whose name has been utterly forgotten, the great Ordinance de la Marine." After these come the modern codes, such as Napoleon's Code de Commerce of 1807, and the German General Mereantik Code. But England has promulgated a code only now, in 1907, one century after that of France. It is embodied in the Marine Insurance Act, 1906, a statute founded upon a draft prepared by Mr. M. D. Chalmers. This codifying statute is the substantial basis of this article.