Court Opinion

ID: 8853888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 17:23:10.611355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:05:35.821877
License: Public Domain

PUTNAM, Circuit Judge.
The tariff act of August, 1894, contains in the free list this paragraph: “(481) Fish, frozen or packed in ice fresh.” The schedule relating to dutiable fish contains the following: “(210) Herrings, pickled, frozen, or salted, and salt water fish frozen or packed in ice, one-half of one cent per pound.”
The issue here arises from the incongruous expressions touching fish, frozen or packed in ice, found in the paragraphs quoted. The imperative rule of construction applicable to the case is that each paragraph shall be held effective if possible. All other rules referred to by counsel are subordinate to this, and some of them fanciful. It is possible to make each paragraph effective by holding 481 generic, and 210 exceptional or specific; and the court is compelled to accept this construction as obligatory upon it. If the result of the application of this rule of construction should prove absurd in any particular ease, some other rules must be sought for. But such is not the fact here. Since the abrogation of the articles of the treaty with Great Britain of 1871, in pursuance of which the products of the sea fisheries of the maritime provinces were made free, congress has pursued a policy, more or less restricted, of imposing duties on Canadian salt-water fish. We think this was never relaxed, beyond admitting free fish, intended for daily or immediate consumption. This exemption gave rise to a perplexing controversy, whether fish frozen or packed in ice came ordinarily within that classification. The framers of the act of 1894 were apparently anxious to obviate that question, and their anxiety was *776perhaps so great that they omitted to enumerate fresh fish not frozen nor packed in ice. However this may have been, the policy to which we refer had especial relation to the products of the sea fisheries of the maritime provinces, and paragraph 210, as interpreted by us, in connection with the settled purpose declared anew in paragraph 568, to admit free all products of our own fisheries, affects principally Canadian salt-water fish.
Let there be a judgment affirming the decision of the board of general appraisers.