Opinion of the court. all the District Courts by the ninth section of the Judiciary Act, should not be exercised wherever there was navigation which could give rise to admiralty and maritime causes. The Congress which framed that act-the first assembled under the Constitution-seemed to recognize this more extended view of the jurisdiction in admiralty, by placing under its control cases of seizure of vessels under the laws of impost, navigation, and trade of the United States, when those seizures were made in waters navigable from the sea by vessels of ten tons burden or upwards. The case of The Magnolia, 20 IIoward, 296, is another important case in the line of decisions which we have been considering. It was a case of collision occurring on the Alabama River, far above the ebb and flow of the tide, on a stream whose course was wholly within the limits of the State which bears its name. This was thought to present an occasion when the doctrines announced in the case of The Genesee Chief might properly be reconsidered, and modified, if not overruled. Accordingly we find that the argument in favor of the main proposition decided in that case was restated with much force in the opinion of the court, and that a very elaborate opinion was delivered on behalf of three dissenting judges. The principles established by the case of The Genesee Chief were thus reaffirmed, after a careful and full reconsideration. It was also further decided (which is pertinent to the case before us), that the jurisdiction in admiralty on the great Western rivers did not depend upon the act of February 3d, 1845, but that it was founded on the act of September 24th, 1789. That decision was made ten years ago, and the jurisdiction, thus firmly established, has been largely administered by all the District Courts of the United States ever since, without question. At the same time, the State courts have been in the habit of adjudicating causes, which, in the nature of their subjectmatter, are identical in every sense with causes which are acknowledged to be of admiralty and maritime cognizance; * 1 Statutes at Large, 77. Opinion of the court. and they have in these causes administered remedies which differ in no essential respect from the remedies which have heretofore been considered as peculiar to admiralty courts. This authority has been exercised under State statutes, and not under any claim of a general common-law power in these courts to such a jurisdiction. It is a little singular that, at this term of the court, we should, for the first time, have the question of the right of the State courts to exercise this jurisdiction, raised by two writs of error to State courts, remote from each other, the one relating to a contract to be performed on the Pacific Ocean, and the other to a collision on the Mississippi River. The first of these cases, The Moses Taylor, had been decided before the present case was submitted to our consideration. The main point ruled in that case is, that the jurisdiction conferred by the act of 1789, on the District Courts, in civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, is exclusive by its express terms, and that this exclusion extends to the State courts. The language of the ninth section of the act admits of no other interpretation. It says, after describing the criminal jurisdiction conferred on the District Courts, that they "shall also have exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, including all seizures under laws of impost, navigation, or trade of the United States, when the seizures are made on waters which are navigable from the sea by vessels of ten or more tons burden." If the Congress of the United States has the right, in providing for the exercise of the admiralty powers, to which the Constitution declares the authority of the Federal judiciary shall extend, to make that jurisdiction exclusive, then, undoubtedly, it has done so by this act. This branch of the subject has been so fully discussed in the opinion of the court, in the case just referred to, that it is unnecessary to consider it further in this place. It must be taken, therefore, as the settled law of this court, that wherever the District Courts of the United States have original cognizance of admiralty causes, by virtue of the act of 1789, that cognizance is exclusive, and no other Opinion of the court. court, state or national, can exercise it, with the exception always of such concurrent remedy as is given by the common law. This examination of the case, already decided by this court, establishes clearly the following propositions: 1. The admiralty jurisdiction, to which the power of the Federal judiciary is by the Constitution declared to extend, is not limited to tide-water, but covers the entire navigable waters of the United States. 2. The original jurisdiction in admiralty exercised by the District Courts, by virtue of the act of 1789, is exclusive, not only of other Federal courts, but of the State courts also. 3. The jurisdiction of admiralty causes arising on the interior waters of the United States, other than the lakes and their connecting waters, is conferred by the act of September 24th, 1789. 4. The admiralty jurisdiction exercised by the same courts, on the lakes and the waters connecting those lakes, is governed by the act of February 3d, 1845. If the facts of the case before us in this record constitute a cause of admiralty cognizance, then the remedy, by a direct proceeding against the vessel, belonged to the Federal courts alone, and was excluded from the State tribunals. It was a case of collision between two steamboats. The case of The Magnolia,* to which we have before referred, was a case of this character; and many others have been decided in this court since that time. That they were admiralty causes has never been doubted. We thus see that every principle which is necessary to a decision of this case has been already established by this court in previous cases. They lead unavoidably to the conclusion, that the State courts of Iowa acted without jurisdiction; that the law of that State attempting to confer this jurisdiction is void, because it is in conflict with the act of Congress of September 24th, 1789, and that this act is well authorized by the Constitution of the United States. Unless * 20 Howard, 296. Opinion of the court. we are prepared to retract the principles established by the entire series of decisions of this court on that subject, from and including the case of The Genesee Chief, down to that of The Moses Taylor, decided at this term, we cannot escape this conclusion. The succeeding cases are in reality but the necessary complement and result of the principles decided in the case of The Genesee Chief. The propositions laid down there, and which were indispensable to sustain the judgment in that case, bring us logically to the judgment which we must render in this case. With the doctrines of that case on the subject of the extent of the admiralty jurisdiction we are satisfied, and should be disposed to affirm them now if they were open to controversy. It may be well here to advert to one or two considerations to which our attention has been called, but which did not admit of notice in the course of observation which we have been pursuing without breaking the sequence of the argu ment. 1. It is said there is nothing in the record to show that the Iline was of ten tons burden or upwards, and that, therefore, the case is not brought within the jurisdiction of the Federal courts. The observation is made, in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Iowa, in reference to the provision of the act of 1845, which that court supposed to confer jurisdiction on the Federal courts in the present case, if it had such jurisdiction at all. We have already shown that the jurisdiction is founded on the act of 1789. That act also speaks of vessels of ten tons burden and upwards, but not in the same connection that the act of 1845 does. In the latter act it is made essential to the jurisdiction that the vessel which is the subject of the contract, or the tort, should be enrolled and licensed for the coasting trade, and should be of twenty tons burden, or upwards. In the act of 1789, it is declared that the District Courts shall have jurisdiction. in admiralty of seizures for violations of certain laws, where such seizures are made on rivers navigable by vessels of ten tons burden or upwards from the sea. In the latter case, the phrase is used as describing the carrying capacity of the Opinion of the court. river where the seizure is made. In the former case, it relates to the capacity of the vessel itself. 2. It is said that the statute of Iowa may be fairly construed as coming within the clause of the ninth section of the act of 1789, which "saves to suitors, in all cases, the right of a common-law remedy where the common law is competent to give it." But the remedy pursued in the Iowa courts, in the case before us, is in no sense a common-law remedy. It is a remedy partaking of all the essential features of an admiralty proceeding in rem. The statute provides that the vessel may be sued and made defendant without any proceeding against the owners, or even mentioning their names. That a writ may be issued and the vessel seized, on filing a petition similar in substance to a libel. That after a notice in the nature of a mouition, the vessel may be condemned and an order made for her sale, if the liability is established for which she was sued. Such is the general character of the steamboat laws of the Western States. While the proceeding differs thus from a common-law remedy, it is also essentially different from what are in the West called suits by attachment, and in some of the older States foreign attachments. In these cases there is a suit against a personal defendant by name, and because of inability to serve process on him on account of non-residence, or for some other reason mentioned in the various statutes allowing attachments to issue, the suit is commenced by a writ directing the proper officer to attach sufficient property of the defendant to answer any judgment which may be rendered against him. This proceeding may be had against an owner or part owner of a vessel, and his interest thus subjected to sale in a common-law court of the State. Such actions may, also, be maintained in personam against a defendant in the common-law courts, as the common law gives; all in consistence with the grant of admiralty powers in the ninth section of the Judiciary Act. But it could not have been the intention of Congress, by the exception in that section, to give the suitor all such |