Confiscation

“ But in proceedings against real or personal property to obtain a decree of condemnation and forfeiture under the Confiscation Act, liability of the property seized to confiscation is alone the subject of inquiry. No judgment is possible against any person. The enactment of Congress was that property belonging to any one embraced within several classes of persons should be subject to seizure and condemnation. ”

“ He would never impose any higher penalty on smuggling than confiscation. “Commerce,” he said, “is like a timid maiden, who is scared by rough usage, and must be won by gentle means. Smuggle who will, and welcome. The merchant who exposes himself to the chance of having his goods confiscated runs a greater risk than my treasury. If he cheats me nine times and I catch him the tenth, I shall be no loser by the game.” ”

“ It is true that the law of nations goes in many cases much farther, and inflicts the penalty of confiscation for very gross and wanton violations of duty. But, then, it limits the penalty to cases of extraordinary turpitude or violence. ”

“ If the defect were one of form it might be amended; but being substantial, it seems to me it is fatal.
'The other articles of the information do not save it. The same ambiguity is kept up in the saventh and eighth articles as in the previous ones, but they do not set forth any of the offences which in the statute are made the basis or cause of confiscation. They are evidently meant to be assigned under the sixth section of the act. But that section refers to persons who in any State or Territory of the United States, other than those named as aforesaid, were engaged in the rebellion. ”

“ Van Riswick, 92 U.S. 207, which was before this court at October term, 1875, it was held that after an adjudicated forfeiture and sale of an enemy's land under the confiscation act, and the joint resolution accompanying it, there was not left in him any interest which he could convey by deed. This ruling was not made upon any express provision of the statute. There is no personal disability imposed by its provisions upon the offending party beyond the forfeiture of his estate during his life. It was made by the court apparently upon what it considered the policy of the confiscation act. ”

“ The law which ordains confiscations, sets a price on the head of the subject, with the guilty punishes the innocent, and by reducing them to indigence and despair, tempts them to become criminal. Can there be a more melancholy spectacle, than a whole family, overwhelmed with infamy and misery, from the crime of their chief? ”

“ If too much is attempted in the way of confiscation, nothing will be accomplished. If nothing is confiscated, you array against you all who wish in a civil war merely to preserve their property and to remain quiet. ”

“ Congress had, by several statutes, of which the act of July 13th was one, defined certain acts, or conditions growing out of the rebellion, which would render property liable to confiscation to the United States. It became evident that in many of these cases loyal citizens might have rights and interests in such property which justice required to be protected. ”

“ There was no arbitrary assumption or exertion of authority, no interference with the exercise of judicial power, no invasion of the province of the judiciary, nothing which bears the most remote resemblance to seizure or confiscation of property. ”

“ While the manner of seizing ordinary personal property or real estate, for the purposes of confiscation proceedings, under the two acts of congress on which this libel professes to be founded, namely, the act of April 6, 1861, and the act of July 17, 1862, is easily understood and followed, namely, an actual seizure and actual possession by the officer under the monition, it has not been so plain what proceeding should be had in the confiscation of debts due to one who has incurred the penalty of such confiscation, and who is not within the jurisdiction of the court. ”

“ When the circumstances of the time are such that it is deemed right and proper to abrogate all law, and to establish over the land a reign of terror and of the sword—to pour out, in deference to the paramount claims of the safety of the state, public money, whether obtained from present taxation or the mortgage of posterity, with profusion absolutely uncontrolled—to decree confiscation on a scale of unprecedented magnitude; it is obvious that a reputation for clemency, economy, and respect for the native rights of property, is obtainable under conditions that are not strictly normal. ”

“ The seizure and confiscation of property of persons engaged in the rebellion, and the appropriation of the proceeds to support the army and navy, were supposed-whether wisely or unwisely is immaterial-to have a tendency to insure the speedy termination of the rebellion; and it was to prevent the provisions enacted to enforce the confiscation from being evaded by the parties whose property was liable to seizure, that sales, transfers, and conveyances of it were declared invalid. ”

“ In accordance with this, there is, as a rule, no allusion to confiscation in the sentences of the French Inquisition, though in one or two instances chance has preserved for us, in the accounts of the procureurs des encours, or royal stewards of the confiscations, evidence that estates were sold and covered into the fisc in cases in which the forfeiture is not specified in the sentence. In condemnations of absentees and of the dead, confiscation is occasionally declared, as though in these the State might need some guidance, but even here the practice is not uniform. ”

“ CONFISCATION (from Lat. confiscare, to consign to the fiscus, or imperial treasury) , in Roman law the seizure and transfer of private property to the fiscus by the emperor; hence the appropriation, under legal authority, of private property to the state; in English law the term embraces forfeiture (q.v.) in the case of goods, and escheat (q.v.) in the case of lands, for crime or in default of heirs (see also Eminent Domain) . Goods may also be confiscated by the state for breaches of statutes relating to customs, excise or explosives. ”

“ The language of the eminent chief justice is perhaps subject to some qualification, if it was intended to state as a rule of public law that all property of the enemy, whether on land or water, was subject to confiscation. ”

“ In many, the violent courses of confiscation and attainder which accompanied this great revolution excite so just an indignation, that they either forget to ask whether the end might not have been reached by more laudable means, or condemn that end itself either as sacrilege, or at least as an atrocious violation of the rights of property. ”

“ What is the meaning of confiscating the proprietary rights in the soil? We have heard from a noble Lord in 'another place' and it has been stated in the course of the debate here, that this sentence of confiscation refers only to certain unpleasant persons who are called talookdars, who are barons and robber chiefs and oppressors of the people. This is by no means the first time that, after a great wrong has been committed, the wrongdoer has attempted to injure by calumny those upon whom the wrong has been inflicted. ”

“ As to the Confiscation acts—it is enough to say that the Constitution gives Congress power 'to declare the punishment of treason.' Confiscation of property—as well as forfeiture of life—is a punishment attached to this great crime in the practice, I believe, of every Government that has existed. The rebels confiscate all the property of men in the South loyal to the Union, on which they can lay their hands; and their practice can be condemned by us only on the ground that the crime of rebellion makes all their acts in support of it criminal. ”

“ The theory that the practice of law is nothing more than a privilege conferred by the State which it can destroy whenever it can assert a 'reasonable' justification for doing so seems to me to permit plain confiscation. ”

“ In either alternative the property was made subject to confiscation. It may be the information might have been more artifically drawn, and that if the owner had appeared in answer to the citation he might have interposed successfully a special demurrer. But after default was made and entered, and after a final judgment of condemnation, faults in the mode of pleading, mere formal faults, can be of no importance. They cannot have injured any one. ”

“ But private property on land is exempt from confiscation, with the exception of such as may become booty in special cases, when taken from enemies in the field or in besieged towns, and of military contributions levied upon the inhabitants of the hostile territory. ”

“ We have seen, by the authorities cited, that intercourse with the enemy is sufficient cause for personal punishment, and for the confiscation of property; that it is a cause originating in, and inflexibly enforced by necessity for guarding the public safety. In this cause are established against the claimants of this vessel, not only intercourse, but trading, in its common acceptation. ”

“ The argument that it is improper to infer a restriction on confiscation of material when confiscation of product is permitted fails to give weight to the difference between a confiscation which interferes with production under federal supervision and confiscation after production because of a higher standard demanded by a state for its consumers. ”

“ But, supposing it not to be a piratical aggression, or an attempt to commit one, still it was an act of deliberate, wanton, flagrant hostility, committed against the law of nations, and the rights of this country as one of the community of nations. For such an offence there must be some punishment, and the appropriate penalty inflicted in analogous cases, is that of confiscation. ”

“ What we have to say upon the Confiscation Act, the title which passed by a condemnation and sale under it, and the power of enemies to sell and convey to each other their interest in real property situated within the lines of the other belligerent, will sufficiently express our judgment upon the questions involved, and serve to guide the court below in any subsequent proceedings. ”

“ Sufficient appears to show that the parties in each case claim title to a certain portion of the estate and property condemned as forfeited to the United States under the before-described confiscation proceedings. Two of the claimants, to wit, the defendant in the first suit and the plaintiff in the second, set up title as purchasers under the respective deeds of the marshal given to them respectively as purchasers at the confiscation sale. ”

“ According to the modern law of nations, for there has been some relaxation in practice from the strictness of the ancient rules, the carriage of contraband goods to the enemy, subjects them, if captured, in delicto, to the penalty of confiscation; but the vessel and the remaining cargo, if they do not belong to the owner of the contraband goods, are not subject to the same penalty. ”

“ The State of Georgia has set up her confiscation act, which certainly is a fair foundation for future judicial investigation; and that an injury may not be done, which it may be out of our power to repair, the injunction ought, I think, to issue, till we are enabled, by a full enquiry, to decide upon the whole merits of the case. ”

“ All which confiscations and penalties shall be distributed one third part to the profit of the plaintiff [informer—? including the corporal punishment] ; one third part to the poor; and one third part to the Officers, where the said confiscation shall be demanded. ”

“ And the same limitation arising from a solicitude not to unduly restrain in the future the operation of the law came to be applied where the asserted confiscation was held to be established. In other words, the decree enjoining the enforcement of the statute in that case was also qualified as without prejudice to the enforcement of the statute in the future if a change in conditions arose. ”

“ In saying this, of course, it is always to be borne in mind that, as to both carrier and employee, the beneficent and ever-present safeguards of the Constitution are applicable, and therefore both are protected against confiscation and against every act of arbitrary power which, if given effect to, would amount to a denial of due process, or would be repugnant to any other constitutional right. ”

“ The cruelty of the process of confiscation was enhanced by the pitiless methods employed. As soon as a man was arrested for suspicion of heresy his property was sequestrated and seized by the officials, to be returned to him in the rare cases in which his guilt might be declared not proven. ”

“ The intent to conserve and utilize enemy property upon a basis of practical justice and to prevent the owners from receiving benefits therefrom until after the war, but without ultimate confiscation, is clear. ”

“ I see no occasion at all for what amounts to an act of confiscation; why not give us time to settle with our creditors? Why not leave us to deal with our encumbrances in our own way? The whole thing is a regular political swindle, Barton ”

“ No huckster shall buy or retail for his own trade or profit any of the above things, under any condition, under penalty of confiscation of everything thus found in his possession which he has bought or traded for—half to be applied to his Majesty's treasury, and the other half to go to the informer or constable who exposes him, or to the judge who gives sentence. ”

“ Moreover, because of this delicate interdependence of our credit-built finance, the confiscation by an invader of private property, whether stocks, shares, ships, mines, or anything more valuable than jewellery or furniture—anything, in short, which is bound up with the economic life of the people—would so react upon the finance of the invader's country as to make the damage to the invader resulting from the confiscation exceed in value the property confiscated. ”