the constitutional limits of
the maritime jurisdiction of the General Government. That jurisdiction
is entirely independent of the revenue power. It is not derived from
that, nor is it measured thereby.

In that act of Congress which, in the first year of the Government,
organized our judicial system, and which, whether we look to the
subject, the comprehensive wisdom with which it was treated, or the
deference with which its provisions have come to be regarded, is only
second to the Constitution itself, there is a section in which the
statesmen who framed the Constitution have placed on record their
construction of it in this matter. It enacts that the district courts of
the United States "shall have exclusive cognizance of all civil cases
of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, including all seizures under
the law 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 10 or more tons burden, within their respective districts, as well
as upon the high seas." In this cotemporaneous exposition of the
Constitution there is no trace or suggestion that nationality of
jurisdiction is limited to the sea, or even to tide waters. The law is
marked by a sagacious apprehension of the fact that the Great Lakes
and the Mississippi were navigable waters of the United States even
then, before the acquisition of Louisiana had made wholly our own the
territorial greatness of the West. It repudiates unequivocally the rule
of the common law, according to which the question of whether a water
is public navigable water or not depends on whether it is salt or not,
and therefore, in a river, confines that quality to tide water--a rule
resulting from the geographical condition of England and applicable to
an island, with small and narrow streams, the only navigable portion of
which, for ships, is in immediate contact with the ocean, but wholly
inapplicable to the great inland fresh-water seas of America and its
mighty rivers, with secondary branches exceeding in magnitude the
largest rivers of Great Britain.

At a later period it is true that, in disregard of the more
comprehensive definition of navigability afforded by that act of
Congress, it was for a time held by many that the rule established for
England was to be received in the United States, the effect of which was
to exclude from the jurisdiction of the General Government not only the
waters of the M