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Opinion of the court.

It is further objected that the information was informal, in that it contained no charge against Slidell, the alleged owner, but that its averments were in the disjunctive. We have already sufficiently auswered this. So, too, the absence of any averment that the causes of forfeiture were contrary to the form of the statute or statutes of the United States in such case provided, is no sufficient reason for reversing the judgment of the District Court. Such an averment is required by the twenty-second admiralty rule, but even in admiralty a failure to make it cannot be taken advantage of in a court of errors.* The defect is only formal. It is true the absence of such averment in indictments and criminal info.mations has been held to be a fatal fault, but for reasons inapplicable to civil proceedings, and we need not repeat that the present is a civil case.

Another objection urged against the proceedings in the District Court is, that the warrant, citation, and monition was not signed by the clerk of the court. It was attested by the judge, sealed with the seal of the court, and signed by the deputy clerk. This was sufficient. An act of Congress authorized the employment of the deputy, and in gen-. eral, a deputy of a ministerial officer can do every act which his principal might do.†

A further objection urged against the adjudication of forfeiture made by the District Court is, that it was made without any finding that the property belonged to John Slidell, or any person included in either of the classes designated in the fifth and sixth sections of the Confiscation Act. This is a renewal of the complaint so earnestly pressed in Miller v. The United States, and which we held to be without foundation. It is said that notwithstanding the default, it was the duty of the court to "proceed to hear and determine the case according to law, as is directed by the eighty-ninth section of the act of March 2d, 1799, respecting forfeitures incurred under that act." But were this conceded, of what avail would it be in this case in support of the objection?

* The Merino, 9 Wheaton, 401. 1 Stat. at Large, 696.

† Comyn's Digest, Officer, D., 8.

Opinion of the court.

The court did proceed to hear and determine the case after the default was entered. And it was not until after such hearing and consideration that the property was condemned, This appears by the record. Having heard and considered evidence, it must be presumed the court found that the property belonged to a person engaged in the rebellion, or one who had given aid or comfort thereto, as well as all other facts necessary to the rendition of the judgment. This is a presumption always made in support of judgments of courts after their jurisdiction is made to appear. No rule of law required the District Court to state in detail in its record its findings of fact, and no such practice has prevailed in any court except some which are bath of limited and inferior jurisdiction. Nor is it to be considered in a court of error whether the evidence was sufficient to warrant the findings presumed to have been made, and without which the judg ment could not have been given. A less degree of evidence is certainly needed after a default. Even in United States v. The Lion,* so much relied upon, where a condemnation was sought under an act of Congress which enacted that after the default the court should proceed to hear and determine the case according to law, Judge Sprague said, "To what extent there must be a hearing must depend on the circumstances of the case." "The court," said he, "will at least examine the allegations of the libel, to see if they are suffi cient in law, the return of the marshal, and such affidavit. or affidavits as the district attorney shall submit." And he added that a wilful omission by the owners to answer might of itself satisfy the court that a forfeiture should be decreed. But without further consideration of this objection, we refer to the opinion delivered in Miller v. United States, to which we still adhere.

There remains but one other matter which requires notice. It is contended that the proclamations of amnesty in 1868 amounted in effect to a repeal of the Confiscation Act. To this we cannot assent. No power was ever vested in the

* 1 Sprague, 899.

Opinion of Clifford, J., dissenting.

President to repeal an act of Congress. Moreover, the property condemned in this case became vested in the United States in 1865, by the judgment of forfeiture, and the sale under the venditioni exponas merely couverted into money that which was the property of the government before. No subsequent proclamation of amnesty could have the effect of divesting vested rights. Even the express repeal of a statute does not take away rights of property which accrued. under it while it was in force.

We have thus reviewed the whole record of the proceedings in the District Court, and we have been able to discover nothing which justified a reversal of the decree of condemnation.

JUDGMENT OF THE CIRCUIT COURT REVERSED, and the cause remanded with instructions to

AFFIRM THE JUDGMENT OF THE DISTRICT COURT.

Mr. Justice CLIFFORD: I dissent from the opinion of the court in this case because it is repugnant to the repeated decisions of this court, to the eighty-ninth section of the Collection Act, and to the twenty-ninth admiralty rule of this court, which was adopted as the rule of decision more than thirty years ago; and because it is opposed to the whole current of the decisions of the admiralty courts and to the rules laid down by the most approved writers upon admiralty law.*

Apart from that, I also adhere upon the merits to the dis senting opinion in the case of Miller v. United States.†

Mr. Justice FIELD: I dissent from the opinion and judgment of the court on the grounds stated in the dissenting opinions in the cases of Miller v. United States, and Tyler v.

The Vengeance, 3 Dallas, 297; The Sarah, 8 Wheaton, 394; 1 Stat. at Large, 696; Admiralty Rules, No. 29; The David Pratt, Ware, 495; Clerke's Praxis, art. 35; The Schooner Lyon, 1 Sprague, 400; 2 Conklin's Admiralty, 2d ed. 178; Benedict's Admiralty, % 449, 452; 2 Browne's Civil and Admiralty Law, 401; Dunlap's Practice, 206; 2 Parsons on Shipping and Admiralty, 400.

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Statement of the case.

Defrees, reported in the 11th of Wallace, so far as they are applicable to the facts of this case; and on the further ground, that the libel of information is fatally defective in charging no one offence positively, but several offences in the alternative.

Mr. Justice DAVIS also dissented.

Mr. Justice BRADLEY, not having heard the argument, took no part in the judgment.

NOTE.

CLAIMS OF MARCUARD ET AL.

Holders of liens against real estate sold under the Confiscation Act of July 17th, 1862, should not be permitted to intervene in any proceedings for the confiscation. Their liens will not, in any event, be divested.

In these cases, which were several appendages to the case just above reported, and which came here on error or appeal from the Circuit Court for the District of Louisiana, Marcuard, the Citizens' Bank of Louisiana, and the Merchants' Bank of New Orleans, alleged that at the time of filing the information mentioned in the foregoing case as the foundation of the sale which was made of the eight hundred and forty-four lots and ten squares of ground in New Orleans, owned by Slidell, they respectively held liens against the said property. And they were permitted by the courts below to intervene for the protection of their claims. Those courts, however-the District Court first, and the Circuit Court affirming its action-refused to let them take the proceeds of the sale.

On the different writs of error or appeals the question was whether this action was right.

Mr. Thomas Allen Clarke, for the parties appellant or plaintiffs in error, denied that it was.

Mr. C. H. Hill, Assistant Attorney-General, contra.

Statement of the case.

Mr. Justice STRONG delivered the opinion of the court. The parties now before us complain that they were not allowed to take the proceeds of the sales. But they ought not to have been allowed to intervene. They had no interest, even if they were lien holders, in the confiscation proceedings. It was only the right of John Slidell, whatever that right was, that could be condemned and sold, and the sale under the judgment of condemnation in no degree disturbed their liens. By the decree of condemnation the United States succeeded to the position of Slidell, and the sale had no other purpose or effect than to make the thing confiscated available for the uses designated by the Confiscation Act. This was decided in Bigelow v. Forrest, and more recently in Day v.. Micout The District Court, therefore, acted correctly in rejecting the claims of the appellants and plaintiffs in error, even if the reasons given for the rejection were insufficient, and the Circuit Court was not in error in affirming what the District Court did.

*

The action of the Circuit Court in the premises is, therefore, AFFIRMED IN EACH OF THE CASES.

Mr. Justice BRADLEY did not sit during the argument, and took no part in the decision of any of the above causes.

CONRAD'S Lors.

When, under the Confiscation Act of July 17th, 1862, an information has been filed in the District Court and a decree of condemnation and sale of the land seized been made, and the money has been paid into the registry of the court, and on error to the Circuit Court, that court, reversing the decree, has dismissed the information but confirmed the sale, and ordered the proceeds to be paid to the owner of the land-if on error by the United States to this court, this court reverse the decree of the Circuit Court, and affirm the decree of the District Court, that reversal will leave nothing on which a writ of error by the owner can act. The judgment having been reversed, the confirmation of the sale and order to pay the proceeds full. The only judgment can be reversal again. ERROR to the Circuit Court for the District of Louisiana. On an information very similar to that in Slidell's case, filed in the District Court for Louisiana, by The United States v. Ten † 18 Id. 156.

* 9 Wallace, 339.

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