Peter Vivian Daniel

“ It is apparent that the only question of law raised in this cause is the question of an appropriation of payments by debtor and creditor, it being insisted, in behalf of the United States, and being so ruled by the court below, that when, at the end of a quarter, there might be a default on the part of a postmaster, it was competent for him to supply such default, or to extinguish the debt then due from him, by payments made posterior to the end of the quarter ”

“ Patton, reported in 4 Cranch, 320, Chief Justice Marshall said, in pronouncing the decision:-'It is a clear principle of law, that a person owing money on two several accounts, as upon a bond and simple contract, may elect to apply his payments to which account he pleases; but if he fails to make the application, the election passes from him to the creditor. No principle is recollected which obliges the creditor to make the election immediately. ”

“ In instances of official bonds executed by the principal at different times, with separate and distinct sets of sureties, this court has settled the law to be, that the responsibility of the separate sets of sureties must have reference to, and be limited by, the periods for which they respectively undertake by their contract, and that neither the misfeasance nor nonfeasance of the principal, nor any cause of responsibility occurring within the period for which one set of sureties have undertaken, can be transferred to the period for which alone another set have made themselves answerable. ”