Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/831

 UNITED STATES V. CAMPBELL. 819 �the collector is by the statute made the duty for the purpose of col- lecting it as a duty." �In Lawrence v.Caswell, 13 iiow. 488, Taney, C. J., says, in refer- ence to an excessive liquidation: "Wh.ere no protest is made, the duties (i. e., the excessive duties) are not illegally exacted in the legal sense of the term, but paid in obedience to the decision of the tribunal to which the law bas conuded the power of deciding the question." To the same effect is Nichols v. U. S. 7 Wall. 122, 12T. �In any suit brought by the United States upon this bond, and upon the very clause now in question, to recover the amount of duty as ascertained by the original liquidation, that liquidation would be final and conelusive, and no further inquiry permitted into the rate or amount of duty. U. S. v. Cousineri), 7 Ben. 251 ; Watt v. U. S. 15 Blatchf. 33; Westray v. U. S. 18 Wall. 322; U. S. v. Phclps, 17 Blatchf. 317. The statute, in declaring that "the goods shall be liable to duty accordingly," i. e., according to the liquidation then made, "any act of congress notwithstanding," makes the liquidation the measure of the amount of the "legal duties," and payment in accordance with this liquidation is a payment of the "legal duties to which the goods are tlien sulyect," and is, for the time being at least, a perfect performance of the condition of the bond, and oonsequently a discharge of the surety. �But it is claimed that a subsequent liquidation vacates the former liquidation, and determines the true amount of "legal duties" to whieh the goods were originally subject, and that, consequently, under the new liquidation, the condition of the bond is not fulfilled, This claim, if valid, would create against the surety a liability for his principal long after the period of the surety's risk contemplated by the bond had expired, when the security in the hands of the govern- ment was gone, and when the lapse of time might have produced great changes in the surety's means of indemnity against his prin- cipal. Such a reliquidation, made after the delivery of the goods and after the expiration of the three years prescribed by the bond, can- not, in my judgment, be enforced against the surety, because it would in effect prolong his risk indefinitely, and postpone his means of resort to his principal for indemnity beyond the period stipulated in the bond, and would be, therefore, in its legal effect, an alteration of the contract in an essential particular, viz., as respects the duration of his risk. �It is a well-settled condition of the obligation of a surety that the crediter shall do no act whereby the risk of the surety would be in- ��� �