Henderson's Distilled Spirits/Dissent Field

Mr. Justice FIELD, with whom concurred the CHIEF JUSTICE and Mr. Justice MILLER, dissenting.

I am unable to concur in the judgment of the majority of the court, and will briefly state the grounds of my dissent.

The proceeding is an information for the forfeiture of one hundred barrels of distilled spirits. The forfeiture is not decreed, on the ground that the government has not received the taxes levied on the spirits, for it is admitted that these have been paid; nor on the ground that the claimant has committed or participated in the commission of any fraud in the acquisition of the property, for it is conceded that he purchased the spirits in good faith without knowledge of any defect or taint in his vendor's title. Nor is the forfeiture inflicted for any violation of law, in act or deed, on the part of the distiller of whom the claimant purchased. He only removed the spirits from the place of their manufacture to the bonded warehouse of the United States, and that was a lawful, and not an unlawful act. The forfeiture is decreed because the former owner, in removing the spirits to the bonded warehouse, intended at the time to defraud the government of the tax thereon-an intent, however, which he never attempted to carry into execution.

We thus have this singular and, I venture to say, unprecedented fact, in the history of judicial decisions in this country, that the property of a citizen honestly acquired, without suspicion of wrong in his vendor, is forfeited and taken from him because such vendor, at some period whilst owning the property, conceived the intent to defraud the government of the tax thereon, although such intent was never developed in action, and for the execution of which no step was even taken.

The presumption is that the majority of the court are right in this decision, and that the minority are mistaken in their views of the law governing the case. It is, therefore, with diffidence that I venture to dissent from their judgment, a diffidence which is greatly augmented by the declaration of the majority, that it is impossible to escape the conclusion which they have reached.

But for this conclusion I should have supposed that it would have been impossible, at this day and in this age, and in our country, to obtain a decree confiscating the property of a citizen for anything which a former owner of the property may have intended to do, but never did, with respect to it. I should have said that the intentions of the mind, lying dormant in the brain, had long since ceased to be subjects for which legislatures prescribed punishment. Against threatened injuries to person or property remedies are provided; and this, it is believed, is the extent to which legislation can legitimately go with respect to intentions, however fraudulent or wicked, so long as they remain undeveloped by action. Penalties and forfeitures are not inflicted at this day in any civilized and free government for the motives with which lawful acts are done.

The inability to ascertain, with certainty, the intentions of a party, except as they are exhibited in his acts, and the injustice which must necessarily follow any attempt to inflict punishment for them, except as they are thus exhibited, have hitherto, in this country, prevented any legislation of that character, unless such legislation is found in the present revenue act of Congress. The injustice in its operation of such legislation, assuming such legislation to exist, could not be more strikingly illustrated than in the present case. But I am not prepared to admit, notwithstanding the cogency and persuasiveness of the able and elaborate argument in the opinion of the majority, that there is any such legislation on our statute-book.

The act of Congress under which this proceeding was taken provides, in its twenty-eighth section, for the establishment of bonded warehouses for the storage of spirits 'to secure the payment of the internal revenue tax thereon,' and, in its forty-fifth section, prohibits 'the removal of distilled spirits from the place where the same are distilled otherwise than into a bonded warehouse, as provided by law,' imposing penalties upon parties making such removal, and declaring that 'the distilled spirits so removed' shall be forfeited to the United States.

The same act declares, in its fourteenth section, that if any goods or commodities, upon which a tax is imposed, or the materials, utensils, or vessels, proper or intended to be used in their manufacture, are removed, deposited, or concealed in any place, 'with intent to defraud the United States of such tax, or any part thereof,' they shall be forfeited to the United States. And it is upon the language of this section, as applied to the facts admitted by the parties, that the majority of the court found the decree of forfeiture.

The language is undoubtedly broad enough to cover any removal of spirits, upon which a tax has been imposed, from their place of manufacture; and, if it has any reference to articles of that character, it must be construed in connection with the language of the forty-fifth section. And the evident meaning of the two sections, if they are construed together, is, that the removal, for which a forfeiture is declared, is a removal to some other place than a bonded warehouse of the United States. Of a removal to such warehouse it is difficult to perceive how an intent to defraud the government can be, in truth, affirmed. It would be as reasonable to declare that a debtor had an intention to defraud his creditor when he placed in the hands of the latter the money to pay his demand. It is plain, in my judgment, or rather I should have said it was plain but for the opinion of the majority, that the removal of spirits forbidden by that section is a removal to some place beyond the reach of the government, or where the government would be in some way embarrassed or obstructed in the collection of its tax. It seems to me a strange application of the prohibition to make it cover a removal of spirits to a warehouse specially provided by the government for their reception, and where they are placed in the possession and custody of the officers of the United States.

But I am unable to convince myself that the fourteenth section has any reference whatever to the removal of distilled spirits. The previous sections of the act relate to taxes on a great variety of articles, of several hundred different kinds, and it does not include distilled spirits among them. The removal mentioned in the fourteenth section would seem, therefore, to apply to the removal from the place of their manufacture of the articles thus previously designated, or at least of articles mentioned in the statute, for the removal of which no different penalties are specifically prescribed.

The sections of the act, from the twenty-first to the forty-fifth inclusive, relate to the tax on distilled spirits, and contain numerous provisions applicable only to them. The punishment they prescribe for the removal of the spirits from the place of their manufacture, otherwise than to a bonded warehouse, in addition to their forfeiture, is different from the penalty prescribed by the fourteenth section, for the like removal of other goods. This fact would seem to be conclusive, if other reasons were wanting, that the fourteenth section has no reference to the removal of distilled spirits. The special provisions respecting them should except them, according to all established canons of interpretation, from the general language of that section.

'That a law,' says Chief Justice Marshall, 'is the best expositor of itself, that every part of an act is to be taken into view for the purpose of discovering the mind of the legislature, and that the details of one part may contain regulations restricting the extent of general expressions used in another part of the same act, are among those plain rules laid down by common sense for the exposition of statutes, which have been uniformly acknowledged.'

And it is laid down in the elementary treatises that where a general intention is expressed in one part of a statute, and a particular intention in another part, inconsistent with the general intention, the particular intention is to be regarded as an exception.

The suggestion by the counsel of the government, that a removal of distilled spirits to a bonded warehouse, although the law provides for such removal as a means for securing the payment of the tax, may be made with intent to defraud the United States of such tax, inasmuch as there may be an agreement between distillers and warehousemen to have the spirits secretly drawn out from the vessels, or to have the spirits released upon insufficient security, does not strike me as entitled to any consideration in this case. Conspiracies there undoubtedly may be with officers of the United States to defraud the government, but in the absence of any proof tending to establish such a conspiracy, the court would not be justified in imagining its existence for the purpose of working a forfeiture of goods in the hands of an innocent party. It would rather indulge the more rational and just presumption that all the officers of the government did their duty, until at least some evidence to the contrary was produced.

This is a case of great hardship and manifest injustice. The claimant found the spirits in a bonded warehouse of the government, in custody of the officers of the United States. He paid to them the tax due on the goods, and he paid to the owner their value. He had no suspicions that his vendor ever entertained any intention to defraud the government of the tax levied on them, and if he ever had such suspicions he might well have supposed that his vendor had repented of his intention, when he delivered the property to the keeping of the officers of the United States.

The government through its officers took from the innocent purchaser the duties upon the goods, thus saying to him that the goods then belonged to the distiller who placed them in the warehouse. The government now declares through its officers that these goods all the time belonged to it by reason of the previous forfeiture, and thus the honest claimant loses both the taxes and the goods, or at least is left to the doubtful chances of obtaining the former by petition to the government, and the latter by action against his vendor.

The object of the act of Congress, under which the forfeiture is declared, is to raise revenue; and it seems to me that the severe construction in favor of forfeitures in the hands of innocent parties, given by the majority of the court, must have a tendency to defeat this object; for it will scarcely be possible for any one to purchase merchandise with safety when it may be seized and forfeited in his possession for reasons such as are assigned in this case.

I am of the opinion that the judgment of the court below should be affirmed.