David Josiah Brewer

“ When it is remembered that a penalty may be recovered by indictment or information in a criminal action, or by a civil action in the form of an action of debt, and also that the circuit courts of the United States are, as contradistinguished from the district courts the federal courts of original civil jurisdiction, the significance of this clause is clear. ”

“ Given the power to exclude, it has a right to make that exclusion effective by punishing those who assist in introducing, or attempting to introduce, aliens in violation of its prohibition. The importation of alien laborers, who are under previous contract to perform labor in the United States, is the act denounced, and the penalty is visited, not upon the alien laborer,-although, by the amendment of February 23, 1887, (24 Stat. 414,) he is to be returned to the country from which he came,-but upon the party assisting in the importation. ”

“ Repeals by implication are not favored, and the general grant of jurisdiction to the district courts of suits to recover penalties and forfeitures should not in any case be transferred exclusively to the circuit courts by words of doubtful import. ”