Court Opinion

ID: 86746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2010-04-28 16:00:48+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:41.566401
License: Public Domain

54 U.S. 295 (____)
13 How. 295
THOMAS TREMLETT, PLAINTIFF IN ERROR,
v.
JOSEPH T. ADAMS.
Supreme Court of United States.

*299 It was argued by Mr. Sherman, for the plaintiff in error, and by Mr. Bibb, for the defendant in error. There was also an elaborate brief on the same side, filed by Mr. Crittenden, (Attorney-General.)
*302 Mr. Chief Justice TANEY delivered the opinion of the court.
This is an action brought by the plaintiff against the collector of the port of New Bedford, for refusing to permit the plaintiff to enter for warehousing at Wareham sundry cargoes of coal, imported from Pictou, Nova Scotia, which were shipped for Wareham, and arrived in the months of September and October, 1846. Wareham was a port of delivery in the collection district of which New Bedford was the port of entry; and the collector, in refusing to permit them to be entered for warehousing at Wareham, acted under the directions of the Secretary of the Treasury. The plaintiff was required to pay in cash the duties imposed by the act of 1842, before the permit for landing at Wareham was granted. And this suit is brought to recover the difference between the duties paid and the duties to which the coal would have been liable if it had been warehoused at Wareham and remained in store as the plaintiff desired until the reduced tariff went into operation. The case depends upon the construction of the Warehousing Act of August 6, 1846.
The law is framed in very general terms, referring to other laws for some of its regulations; and containing but few specific directions as to the manner in which it should be carried into execution. And it authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to make from time to time such regulations, not inconsistent with law, as might be necessary to give full effect to the provisions of *303 the act, and secure a just accountability under it. This mode of legislation has naturally led to some ambiguity, and has given rise to this controversy.
The act went into operation on the day it was approved by the President. And the plaintiff insists that, under its provisions, he was entitled, as soon as it passed, to land his goods at the port of delivery upon bonding for the duties; and to have them placed there in store in order to avail himself, if he thought proper, of the reduced tariff, which took effect on the 2d of December, in the same year. The 6th section of the Tariff Act of July 30, 1846, which passed a few days before the Warehousing Act, of which we are now speaking, provided that all goods imported after the passage of that law, and remaining in the public stores on the 2d of December following, when the act went into operation, should be subject to no other duty upon entry thereof than if they had been imported after that day.
In expounding the Warehousing Act, it must be borne in mind, that it was not passed for the purpose of enabling the importer to avail himself of the reduced rates of duty. It is a part of the general and permanent system of revenue; and its evident object is to facilitate and encourage commerce by exempting the importer from the payment of duties, until he is ready to bring his goods into market. The opportunity it afforded of taking advantage of the reduced rates of duty was an accidental circumstance arising from the time at which it happened to be passed. The provisions in the 6th section of the Tariff Act of July 30, 1846, had no reference to goods entered for warehousing. There was no law at that time which authorized the importer so to enter them. And although the Warehousing Act, which passed a few days afterwards, enabled the importer, by warehousing his goods, to take the benefit of the provisions of the previous law, yet it was not passed for that purpose. And it must be regarded and interpreted, not as an act passed for a temporary purpose, or to meet a change of tariff, but as one intended to be equally applicable to goods imported after the 2d day of December, as to goods imported between the 30th of July and that time. The plaintiff had the same legal rights in this respect at the time he offered to enter his coal at Wareham as an importer of the present day, and nothing more; and no greater advantages were intended to be given him by the Warehousing Act.
Previous to the passage of this act no goods, chargeable with cash duties, could be landed at the port of delivery until the duties were paid at the port of entry. The importer had no right to land them anywhere until they had passed through the custom-house. And they could not be landed at the port of delivery without the permit of the proper officer at the port of *304 entry. This permit in effect delivered them to the owner to be landed under the usual inspection, and sold and disposed of as he thought proper; and the permit could not be granted unless the duties had been paid.
There could, therefore, but rarely be any necessity for public stores or warehouses at a port of delivery, before the passage of the Warehousing Act.
It was otherwise at ports of entry. The importer himself had no right to land them even at a port of entry before the duties were paid. But when the entry at the custom-house was imperfect, for want of the proper documents, or where the goods were damaged in the voyage, and the duties could not be immediately ascertained; or the cash duties were not paid after the forms of entry had been complied with; in all of these cases the collector was directed, by existing laws, to take possession of such goods, and place them in public stores, and retain them until the duties were paid. And as all of this was to be done at the port of entry, public stores were necessary at such ports; and they had accordingly been provided for by law, before the passage of the Warehousing Act.
Now, the Warehousing Act, so far as the landing and storing of goods is concerned, places goods entered for warehousing upon the same footing with goods upon which the duties have not been paid. It provides, that in all cases of failure or neglect to pay the duties within the period allowed by law to the importer, to make entry thereof, or whenever the owner, importer, or consignee, shall make entry for warehousing in the manner directed in the act, the collector shall take possession of the goods and deposit them in the public stores, or in other stores to be agreed on by the collector or other chief officer of the port, and the importer of the goods to be secured in the manner provided for in the act of 1818 relative to the warehousing of wines and distilled spirits. The warehoused goods, therefore, are to be taken possession of by the same officer and stored, and treated like goods upon which the importer had failed to pay duty. And, as the latter were necessarily to be taken possession of at the port of entry, and accustomed to be stored there, the natural inference from this association is, that the law contemplated the storage of warehoused goods at the same place, and did not mean to give the importer a right to store them at any port of delivery to which he might have chosen to ship them. The Warehousing Act gives him no peculiar privileges over the importer of goods directed to be placed in the public stores because the duties were not paid; nor any greater right to select for himself the place of storage.
The 2d section of the act strengthens this construction of the *305 1st section. It provides that warehoused goods, deposited in the public stores in the manner provided in the 1st section, might be withdrawn and transported to any other port of entry; and directs that the party should give bond for the deposit of them in store, in the port of entry to which they shall be destined. The use of the words "ports of entry," in this provision, implies that they were to be stored in a port of that description in the first instance, and to be deposited again in a like port, if they were transported coastwise.
Again, the directions as to the manner in which they are to be secured while they remain in the store, and to be delivered to the party when he is entitled to receive them, leads to the same conclusion. They cannot be withdrawn without a permit from the collector and naval officer of the port at which they are stored. And as there is no naval officer appointed or needed at a port of delivery, this provision would appear to have contemplated the storage at a port of entry and not of delivery. There are certain expressions in the law which may be applied to a port of delivery as well as of entry. But they were introduced for the purpose of authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury, under the power to make regulations, to have suitable storehouses to provide at a port of delivery, when the nature and importance of the trade might require it.
The act of 1799, c. 22, § 21, (1 Stat. at Large, 642,) authorizes the collector, with the approbation of the principal officer of the Treasury Department, to employ proper persons as weighers, gaugers, measurers, and inspectors at the several ports within his district; and also, with the like approbation, to provide, at the public expense, storehouses for the safe-keeping of goods, and such scales, weights, and measures, as may be necessary. The secretary and collector were, therefore, under this law, to determine where storehouses were necessary; and might provide them at a port of delivery, if they believed the interests of the public and of commerce demanded it. But the law confided it to their discretion, to determine whether they should or should not be provided at any particular port of delivery; and the Warehousing Act has not changed the law in this respect, and does not require that there should be public storehouses at every port of delivery at which the importer might wish to warehouse his goods.
The record shows, that after this transaction took place, the secretary did authorize goods to be warehoused at Wareham. But the question before us is not whether he might not have authorized it before; but whether, independently of any regulation by the secretary, the importer had not an absolute right, as soon as the law was passed, to land his goods at the port of *306 delivery to which they were destined, and store them there, upon giving the bonds which the law requires. We think he had not, and that the right, given under the Warehousing Act, was confined to a port of entry, unless extended, by regulation of the secretary, to a port of delivery.
Indeed, the execution of the law would be impracticable under the construction contended for by the plaintiff. For it directs that the bond to be taken on the entry for warehousing, shall be prescribed by the secretary; and it is made his duty to make regulations to carry the law into full effect, and secure a just accountability. These things required time; and the collector could not act without them. Yet, if the plaintiff's construction be the correct one, his right to enter his coal for warehousing at Wareham was as absolute the day after the law passed as it was when he offered to make the entry. For if the law gave him the right, independently of any regulations by the secretary, he was not bound to wait until they were made and the form of the bond prescribed; but might have demanded his rights on the 7th of August, and sued the collector if he failed to obtain them. It is evident that Congress could not have intended to confer upon the importer this right. Nor can the law receive that construction without rejecting the provisions which authorize the secretary to prescribe the form of the bond, and to direct the manner in which the act was to be carried into effect. These provisions, in relation to the power of the secretary, are important, and were intended to guard the public against any abuse of the privileges which the Warehousing Act gave to the importer.
Moreover, many of the ports of delivery are at places where the trade is trivial and unimportant, and where it would be difficult to procure suitable storehouses for a cargo unexpectedly arriving and demanding to be warehoused. In many of them there are not a sufficient number of officers to superintend the landing and warehousing of a cargo of an ordinary ship, and guard it afterwards from being improperly withdrawn. The Warehousing Act does not authorize the appointment of additional officers, at ports of delivery, nor provide for any additional expenses to be incurred by the public in carrying it into execution. And if the collector is bound to grant a permit to land the goods, at any port of delivery which the importer may select for his shipment, it is easy to foresee the abuses to which it would lead; and the frauds that might be practised under it, Congress can hardly be presumed, from any general or ambiguous language, to have intended, in this law, to dispense with all the safeguards which had been so carefully provided and preserved in previous acts. We think neither its words nor its *307 manifest object will justify such a construction, and that the collector was right in refusing the permit to the plaintiff to land and warehouse the coal in question at Wareham.
As regards the small balance of the plaintiff's deposit which remained in the collector's hands after the payment of the legal duties, it is no ground for reversing the judgment of the Circuit Court. The defendant offered to pay it, but the plaintiff refused to receive it. The money placed in the hands of the collector for the estimated duties was a deposit in trust for the United States for the amount that should be found actually due; and for the plaintiff for the balance, if any should remain after the duties were paid. And as the plaintiff refused to receive this balance when tendered, it continues a deposit in the hands of the defendant with the plaintiff's consent; and he cannot subject the collector to the costs and expenses of a suit until he can show that it is wrongfully withheld.
The judgment of the Circuit Court is therefore affirmed with costs.

Order.
This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts, and was argued by counsel, on consideration whereof, it is now here ordered and adjudged by this court, that the judgment of the said Circuit Court in this cause be, and the same is hereby, affirmed, with costs.