Stephen Johnson Field

“ Statutes of limitation, in fixing a period within which rights of action must be asserted, proceed upon the principle that the courts of the country where the person to be prosecuted resides, or the property to be reached is situated, are open during the prescribed period to the suitor. The principle of public law which closes the courts of a country to a public enemy during war, renders compliance by him with such a statute impossible. ”

“ By barefaced and impudent falsehood, and the production of a fabricated letter purporting to be from the complainant, he induced the district attorney to believe that the bond and mortgage of the defendants had been paid and satisfied, and that the collaterals belonged to the complainant, and as his property their confiscation was decreed. Having thus led the public prosecutor to treat his own property as belonging to another, and to be confiscated as such, he must suffer the consequences of his own folly and crime. He cannot charge the loss of the collaterals thus caused to the complainant. ”

“ Interest is the compensation allowed by law, or fixed by the parties, for the use or forbearance of money, or as damages for its detention, and it would be manifestly unjust to exact such compensation, or damages, when the payment of the principal debt was interdicted. ”