Sequestration

“ The injury to the United States of America from the withdrawal of said deposits, diamonds or other property would be irreparable because sequestration of said property is the only means of enforcing this Court's orders or decree against said foreign corporate defendants. ”

“ The question of sequestration arose, and one of the hucksters, I do not remember which, but he was bald, and his forehead was covered with sebaceous wens, and he sometimes did odd jobs for the lawyers, seized the mantle and vowed that HE would see to it that it was produced at the proper time and place, but it was easily apparent that he desired nothing but that the garment should be deposited with thieves, and vanish; thinking that we would be afraid to appear as claimants for fear of being charged with crime. ”

“ That a writ of sequestration would not lie if the defendant held the cotton in question as deputy general agent of the Treasury Department, under the acts of Congress relating to captured or abandoned property. ”

“ Seizure, and eviction from the premises, it is insisted by the defendant, are, under the circumstances, equivalent to sequestration to support the war; and that the decedent, inasmuch as he was compelled to give up the possession of the premises to the fuling military power, is thereby discharged from all obligation to pay the future rent to the plaintiff. ”

“ That Congress in time of war may authorize and provide for the seizure and sequestration through executive channels of property believed to be enemy-owned, if adequate provision be made for a return in case of mistake, is not debatable. ”

“ The writ of sequestration actually provided for was to issue as an appropriate form of execution to subject any 'income and revenue' which the company then had to the payment of its debt then due, and in the income and revenue of the company that might be thus subjected was included 'all moneys coming to the same from the operation of such road,' that is to say, the road in aid of the construction of which the loan of credit was made. ”

“ Then, on the 16th August 1642, the following resolutions were passed by the House of Commons respecting the Inland Posts:—"That the sequestration of the Inland Letter Office to Philip Burlamachi is illegal and void, and ought to be taken off" ... "that Philip Burlamachi and his deputies shall forthwith bring in an account of the profits of the office received by him or his deputies since his illegal sequestration to [Pg 183] the Committee for the Accounts where Mr. Trenchard has the chair" ... "that the proclamation in pursuance of the sequestration is illegal and void." ”

“ Where any species of claims is barred by an act of the legislature, they have considered the act as a bar to their investigation, farther than to ascertain it to be unquestionably within the meaning of the law. This principle will be found to extend to all claims for pay and rations alleged to be due for militia service; to most of the demands against forfeited estates; to all claims for property sequestered, when the sequestration was warranted by the resolutions of the convention and the authority of the commissioners ”

“ Whilst therefore, according to him, the law of retaliation would never justify such acts as the massacre of prisoners, the use of poison, or promiscuous slaughter, he would consider as legitimate reprisals acts like the sequestration by Denmark of debts due from Danish to British subjects in retaliation for the confiscation by England of the Danish fleet in 1807, or Napoleon’s seizure of all English travellers in France in retaliation for England’s seizure and condemnation of French vessels in 1803. ”

“ Corporations are not responsible for liabilities from the time before the confiscation, if all the shares have been transferred by confiscation to the property of a state, unless the liabilities were recovered by the sequestration decreed for the preparation of the seizure. ”

“ In the lay courts the sufferer was obliged to pay his tormentor, for there is a provision that, if he is poor, the executioner is to receive nothing and is not allowed to take his garments in lieu of the money. [100] In the Inquisition where, for offences justifying torture, arrest was accompanied with sequestration, the tribunal necessarily took upon itself the payment and, as we have seen, in 1681, the fee had increased to four ducats. In cases which did not end with confiscation, the outlay was undoubtedly included among the costs of the trial charged against the sequestrated estate. ”

“ Upon the trial the record of the proceedings in the sequestration suit, including the order of assessment and the decrees allowing the claims of creditors, were received in evidence. The entry in the stock book showing the record of the issuance of 50 shares to Selig and their transfer, together with the original certificate as canceled, was introduced. Aside from what was contended to be the effect of the proceedings in the sequestration suit, there was no evidence impeaching the transfer. ”

“ There is a remarkably fine series of these in the churches of Lincolnshire, and in Lincoln cathedral, perhaps the most beautiful in the kingdom.
SEQUESTRATION. This is a separating the thing in controversy from the possession of both the contending parties.
When a living becomes void by the death of an incumbent or otherwise, the ordinary is to send out his sequestration, to have the cure supplied, and to preserve the profits (after the expenses deducted) for the use of the successor. ”

“ Juan Bautista Segondi, a native of the town of Perpignan in France, and an inhabitant of this city, aged fortytwo years, a married man, and by trade a watchmaker, confined in the secret prison of this tribunal, with a sequestration of his property, on the fourteenth of July, for superstitious and necromantical practices. He was assigned two sueldos and the bread of the Contractor, on account of the Treasury, as little of the prisoner’s property was secured. ”

“ Hamilton and myself, should remain, as it was the former year, in sequestration; and that neither of us should reap any benefit of the rent of the same, until the controversy was decided by law.”
He went on to complain that the sequestrator, Captain Phillips, “pays the yearly rent of the fishing privately unto whom Mr. James Hamilton will appoint there; and thereby thinks to deprive me of my rights to the fishing, to my great loss.” He, therefore, besought Cecil to let him have the fishery again, and that meanwhile the Bishop of Derry should be appointed sequestrator. ”

“ Food, it is added, shall be conveyed to the prisoners by persons specially appointed for that duty, and never by a constable or gaoler.
All officers are to be sworn to preserve inviolate secrecy upon all things they may see or hear.
Receivers are commanded that in the event of the acquittal of a person whose property has been sequestered, they must restore the property according to the inventory drawn up at the time of effecting the sequestration—but if there are debts to be satisfied by such a person, these may be paid by order of the inquisitors without awaiting the consent of the debtor. ”

“ They invest the President with extensive powers respecting the sequestration, custody and disposal of enemy property. By section 5 (Comp. St. 1918 Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1919, § 3115 1/2 c) he is in terms authorized to exercise 'any' of these powers 'through such officer or officers as he shall direct.' By section 6 (section 3115 1/2 cc) he is authorized to appoint and 'prescribe the duties of' an officer to be known as the Alien Property Custodian. ”

“ One of the petty privileges which gave rise to constant exacerbation is indicated in the provision that, of the cattle slaughtered in the public shambles, there shall be given weekly the chine and chitterlings of ten oxen—two to each of the inquisitors, one to the alguazil and secretaries, one to the receiver and notary of sequestrations, and the rest to the poor prisoners; this is said to be all that the tribunal is entitled to and anything more must be paid for, nor shall its servants take the chitterlings and sell them. ”

“ At length (2 Aug., 1644) the Common Council took the matter up, and agreed to petition parliament that delinquents might be brought to judgment, and that in all cases of sequestration provision might be made for payment of all just debts out of delinquents' estates.654 Another grievance which the London tradesman had was the large circulation of farthing tokens, which they were unable to get re-changed.655
Ordinance for a standing army, 12 July, 1644. ”

“ The bills however which they prepared for this purpose were delayed by the artifices of Hyde; and at the close of the Session the bishops and the evicted Royalists quietly re-entered into the occupation of their old possessions. The Royalists indeed were far from being satisfied with this summary confiscation. Fines and sequestrations had impoverished all the steady adherents of the royal cause, and had driven many of them to forced sales of their estates ”

“ Provided also, That neither this act, nor any thing therein contained, shall extend to acquit or discharge any person or persons from making restitution of all such rents, sums of money, horses, cattle or other goods, which by a certain act, or pretended act lately made, intituled, An act for repeal of two acts for sequestrations, are required to be restored to those from whom they were taken ”

“ The seizure may be made by any person; but the forfeiture is still to be, by the terms of the act, for the use of the United States. If the act had stopped here, no difficulty in its construction could have occurred. As nothing is given by it to the seizing officer, nothing could be claimed by him except from the bounty of the government. The subsequent clause looks exclusively to cases where the seizure is made by armed vessels of the navy, or by revenue cutters, and directs, in such an event, a distribution to be made in the same manner as in cases of prizes taken from an enemy. ”

“ To bring a case, then, within the exception, the seizure or detention must be bona fide, and upon a reasonable ground. If there has not been an actual illicit or contraband trade, there must at least be a well founded suspicion of it, a probable cause to impute guilt, and justify further proceedings and inquiries; and this is what the law deems a legal and justifiable cause for the seizure or detention. The general words of the policy cover the risks of retraints and detainments of all kings, princes and people. ”

“ Is one mode of confiscation reprobated, because it is an open robber, which quickly ends the pain of its victim ; and the other suffered, because it lies hidden under deceit and complexity, and inflicts slow and lasting tortures? Or is one reprobated, like a small criminal who robs an individual; and the other flattered, like a great one who plunders a nation? Can violations of private property be rendered just or unjust by their modes? Between the modes we have been comparing, there is one difference. Direct confiscation is always pretended to be a punishment of guilt ”

“ That the universal principle, applied by Courts administering the law of nations, was to consider the thing taken in delicto, as responsible, whether it was the property of the master, or of others. In cases of blockade, of contraband, of carrying enemy's property with false papers, of resistance to visitation and search, he is considered as the agent of the owner both of ship and cargo. So, also, the revenue laws, from the necessity of the case, regard him in that character, and subject the vessel and goods under his control to confiscation for his unlawful acts. ”

“ The proceeds of confiscations and the perquisites of officers are such an important item of revenue that the officers are vigilant, and the day before we arrived twenty or thirty mule-loads that had been seized were brought into Comitan; but the profits are large that smuggling is a regular business, the risk of seizure being considered one of the expenses of carrying it on. The markets, however, are but poorly supplied, as we found. We sent for a washerwoman, but there was no soap in the town. We wanted our mules shod, but there was only iron enough to shoe one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If forfeiture of a vehicle seized in the course of importation must always be under section 26, and not under other statutes, then the smuggler arrested at the same time must always be prosecuted under the prohibition act. and never for the smuggling, since seizure under section 26 must be followed, as we have seen, by prosecution of the arrested person under that title and no other. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that Congress had in view the creation of so great a breach in historic remedies and sanctions. ”

“ But the point to which the attention of the court is particularly called, is the care with which the right to confiscate property, by proceedings in rem, in confined to cases 'on the revenue side of the Exchequer,' in which 'the thing is considered as primarily the offender.' In the present case it is not pretended that the houses and lots seized, have committed the offence for which their forfeiture is demanded, or have been in any manner instrumental in, or connected with, the said offence. ”