BINNEY'S CASE. 157

a port at the walls of the city. (r) The city of Chester, in Eng-
land, is situated on the river Dee, the crooked channel of which
had become so choked up, by washings from the land, that ships
were obliged to make a port eight miles below. But some time
since, a new channel was cut for the river near the old one, and at
a vast expense, and ships now again go up to the port at the
city, (s)

The Severn, among the rivers of England, has, of old, been
denounced as 'a most wild unruly river;' its descending floods have,
at various times, swept along with such violence, and carried with
them such masses of earth as entirely to fill up the former, and
excavate an altogether new channel in many spaces; and such is
the rage and impetuosity of the tide, whether of flood or ebb, that
no vessel ventures up it farther than King Road, near its con-
fluence with the Avon, without a pilot, (t) The chief ports on
this river and its branches are Bristol and Gloucester, up to each
of which the tide flows; but to overcome the dangers and difficul-
ties of the natural access to them has called forth the most power-
ful efforts of human ingenuity, and the expenditure of immense
sums of money. About seventy acres of the old and crooked
course of the Avon was to be converted into a vast dock at Bris-
tol, into which ships were to be lifted by locks; and into which
also the boats of the Kennet and Avon canal were to be admitted.
And a canal has been constructed for the passage of ships, seventy
feet wide and eighteen feet deep, from Berkley to Gloucester, a
distance of eighteen miles along the valley of the river, (u)

These and a number of other examples, that might be given,
may be regarded as extensions of tide navigation, so as to have
a port immediately at the city which is the seat of the commerce.
The dangers, difficulties, and delays of the natural tide navigation,
in some cases, and the expense and delay of transhipments and of
land transportation, in others, however short, were so very great as
to demonstrate the necessity and utility of having the port and the
town, or head of the port, immediately together. The termination
of marine navigation, in relation to the matter now under consi-
deration, therefore, is not, in any case, the most interior tide on
which a ship may safely float; but it is uniformly the port at
which, owing to a variety of concurring circumstances, artificial

(r) Malham's Naval Gaz. v. Exeter.—(s) Rees' Cyclo. art. Canal.—(t) Hale de
Jure Maris 16, 34.—(u) Rees' Cyclo. art. Canal.
21 v.2