JOHN LOWELL. 639 



Admiralty suits of all kinds, including some difficult questions in prize 

 causes. The principles and practice of the Admiralty Courts were espe- 

 cially congenial to him. He was in lull sympathy with the tenderness 

 which that court has always shown for the ignorant and improvident 

 sailor ; and the cardinal rule of the Admiralty that no error of statement, 

 or technical defect, or mistake in the kind of relief asked for, should inter- 

 fere with or prevent such a decision of a cause as would work substantial 

 justice between the parties, was in entire harmony with his view as to 

 what should be the aim of all courts and judges so far as the established 

 rules of law and the decided cases would permit, — au opinion which he 

 held so strongly, that for his efforts to attain this end, he was at times 

 called " wayward " in his decisions. 



At the time of Judge Lowell's appointment, there was no national 

 bankrupt act in force, although there was an insolvent act in Massachu- 

 setts with which and its operation he was very familiar ; two years after 

 he became the judge of the District Court, Congress passed the National 

 Bankrupt Act of 1867, in the administration of which he won a distinc- 

 tion which placed him among the foremost, — it is perhaps not too much 

 to say, at the head of the judges in this country, having original juris- 

 diction of cases in Bankruptcy and charged with the administration of 

 this law. 



As has already been said, the subject of Bankruptcy had interested 

 him many years before his appointment to the bench ; he had begun the 

 preparation of the treatise on this branch of the law which since his death 

 has been published by his son, and the work he had done on this book 

 had made him unusually familiar with the underlying principles of the 

 Bankrupt Laws and the adjudicated cases. The purposes of a bankrupt 

 ac t, — to secure the equitable distribution of an insolvent debtor's assets 

 among his creditors, to grant him his discharge from his antecedent lia- 

 bilities if he has honestly surrendered his property to be distributed for 

 the payment of his debts, — and, on the other hand, to prevent such a 

 debtor, who has fraudulently concealed for his own advantage a part 

 of his estate, or unfairly preferred some of his creditors, from receiving 

 the benefit of the act, — these purposes equitable in both aspects, and the 

 simplicity and directness of the methods of procedure under the practice 

 iu Bankruptcy, were all in harmony with his convictions of the useful 

 and beneficent purposes of the law and the courts of justice, and made 

 the administration of this law a congenial task, which he discharged not 

 merely to the satisfaction of the bar, but to the approval of the mercantile 

 class of the community whose interests are most affected by this law, who 



