Joseph Story

“ In the former sense, a debt is often said to be due from a person, when he is the party owing it, or primarily bound to pay, whether the time of payment has or has not arrived. This very clause of the act furnishes an apt illustration of this latter use of the term. It declares that the priority of the United States shall attach 'where the estate of any deceased debtor, in the hands of executors or administrators, shall be insufficient to pay all the debts due from the deceased.' Here the word 'due' is plainly used as synonymous with owing. ”

“ No reason can be perceived, why, in cases of a deficiency of assets of deceased persons, the legislature should make a distinction between bonds which should be payable at the time of their decease, and bonds which should become payable afterwards. The same public policy which would secure a priority of payment to the United States in one case, applies with equal force to the other; and an omission to provide for such priority in regard to bonds payable in futuro, would amount to an abandonment of all claims, except for a pro rata dividend. ”

“ Every word may have a fair construction, without introducing any such restrictive construction. There is this additional consideration which deserves notice, that, in our view, the act of 1797, chapter 74, clearly embraces all debts of the United States, whether payable at the decease of the party or afterwards. There is no reason to presume that the legislature intended to grant any peculiar favour to merchant importers; for otherwise the priority of the United States would have been withdrawn from all bonds for duties, and not (as the argument supposes) from a particular class of such bonds. ”