Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/180

 ANIBAL V. HEACOCK. 173 �other reasonable interpretation ; and cases of fraud, therefore, form an implied exception, to be acted upon by courts of law and equity according to the nature of their respective juris- dictions. Such, it seems to me, is the reason upon wMch the exception is built." �This principle of interpretatioii has no application to a statute which is designed to formulate a System of artifieial rules to effect a satisfactory distribution of the estates of insolvent debtors. It cannot apply unless Congress intended by the bankrupt act to treat a creditor, -who has obtained a preference and concealed the fact, as one who has committed and concealed a fraud, and that Congress did not so intend is very clearly shown by Judge Dillon in Bean v. Brookmire. �The bill in this case does not show that the creditor took any affirmative action to conceal the fact that he had obtained a preference, and in this respect the case is not so favorable to the complainant as that presented in the Exchange National Bank of Colambus v. Harris. Upon the rule, however, which obtaius when a party seeks to defend his fraud by the statute of limitations, it is held that it need not appear that the concealment was efïected by any affirmative action of the defendant, and I have considered the case as though the bill alleged a concealment by the defendant, The consideration, however, that the application of this rule would place a cred- itor who has received a preference and merely kept silent about it in the position of a party who bas committed anà concealed a fraud, fumishes another argument against any 8uch interpretation of the bankrupt àct as is contended for. �The demurrer is Bustained. ����