Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 53 Part 1.djvu/701

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CODIFICATION OF INTERNAL REVENUE LAWS further manufacture." It was contended that no meaning should be attached to the Revised Statutes different from that in the tariff acts. As to this con- tention, the court said: "The Revised Statutes are not a mere compilation and consolidation of the laws of Congress in force on the 1st of December, 1873. The object of that revision was to simplify and bring together all statutes and parts of statutes which, from similarity of subject, ought to be brought together, to expunge redundant and obsolete enactments, and to make such alterations as might be necessary to reconcile contradictions and amend imperfections in the original text of the preexisting statutes. All those statutes were abrogated by section 5596." They may be referred to and considered in order to interpret the meaning of obscure and ambiguous phrases in any section of said revision; but no such reference is necessary or proper in order to modify, under the color of interpretation, any phrases the meaning of which is clear and free from any doubt, except what the terms of the statute invoked may suggest. "The title of the Revised Statutes headed 'Duties Upon Imports' is manifestly intended to be a complete system of tariff legislation, and to embrace and provide for every class of imported articles subject to import duties. The clause * * * (in Schedule E, section 2504) * * * is in clear, explicit and intelligible language. There is nothing in that clause or in any other clause in that section, or in any other section in that title, which renders the meaning of this particular phrase doubtful or leaves room for interpretation or the interpolation of words taken from other preceding statutes upon the subject." The Marine City, 6 Fed. Rep. 413 Libel in Admiralty to recover for loss of baggage against a steamship company. Defense was there was no allegation that the loss was caused by design or neglect of the company. R. S. 4282 provided no recovery could be had against owners of vessels for loss or damage to "merchandise" by fire unless such fire is caused by design or neglect of owner. The act of 1851, from which R. S. 4282 was taken, used the term "any goods or merchandise whatsoever." The court, in deter- mining whether baggage is merchandise within the meaning of the law said the courts could not interpolate words omitted in the revision; and that although the commissioners preparing the Revised Statutes may have thought the word "mer- chandise" broad enough to include "any goods or merchandise whatsoever," it did not do so. The court said further: "That the revision ought to be construed not simply as declaring what was the law on the 1st of December 1873, but as changing the law in certain cases, was evidently the opinion of my learned pred- ecessor in Gillet v. Pierce (Brown, Adm. 553), in which he had occasion to hold that the revision expressly gave the right of trial by jury in certain admiralty cases arising upon the Lakes, notwithstanding it had never before existed. It is true the revision was designed simply as a reenactment or codification of the whole body of the national statutory law, but if the legal effect of each section is to be determined by an examination of the original law from which such section was taken, it might as well never have been adopted. Errors and inadvertent omis- sions are inevitable in a codification of this extent. Many of them were corrected by the act of February 1875, and in the practical application of the revision others will undoubtedly be discovered; but the remedy is with Congress and not in subtle and forced judicial construction * * *. U. S . v. Moore, 26 Fed. Cas. 15,804 An indictment and plea in abatement that one of the persons composing the grand jury indicting defendant was disqualified by reason of the fact that he had without duress and coercion served in the Confederate Army. The language of the section was contained in an act of 1862, which was repealed by an act of 1871, but was carried into the Revised Statutes as section 820. Held, the juror was not disqualified. The language relied on was not the law on December 1, 1873, having been repealed. The language of this section does not enact or reenact anything as law which was not the law on the 1st day of December 1873, and the carrying into the Revised Statutes of a section of an act which had been expressly repealed prior to that date does not reenact such section. Wade v. United States, 21 Ct. Cl. 141 This case was filed May 24, 1872, to recover the proceeds of property under the Abandoned or Captured Property Act of 1863. It was dismissed for want of prosecution May 8, 1876. It again came before the Court of Claims on motion to reinstate it for the purpose of raising on trial the question that the 2 years' limita- tion on filing suits in the above act was repealed by the Revised Statutes, leaving applicable thereto only the general limitation of 6 years provided for in section 1069. It was held that R. S. 1069 could not be held to repeal the Abandoned or Captured Property Act, the provisions of that act having been carried into the Revised Statutes as section 1059. Instead of reenacting the full language, for condensation and conciseness, the Revised Statutes merely provided that the CXCVI