Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/540

 STEWART V. MEREITT. 633 �of fraud upon the part of the collector and the officer of ap- praisal, it can hardly be doubted that prior to June 30, 1864, the System of legislation in regard to the effect of appraisals, and the judicial decisions upon the binding character of ap- praisals free from fraud, and made in conformity with the statute, were substantially uniform. The importer was bound by the appraisal, which was established in conformity with the statutes, after appeal, provided such appraisal was made by persons equipped with power and without fraud. �On June 30, 1864, (the then existing statute in regard to appraisals having been passed in 1851,) a tarif? act was passed, of which the fourteenth and fifteenth sections related to the effect of a decision of the collector upon the rate and amount of duties, and the prerequisites necessary to be taken for a review of such decision either by the secretary of the treasury or by the courts. If no further legislation had taken place there might be room for argument that the de- cision of the collector, upon appraisal made after appeal, in accordance with the act of 1851, was not final in the sense that it could not be reviewed by the secretary or by the courts, for it might be argued that while the decision of the collector as to the rate of duties affected the classification only of articles, yet that his decision as to amount involved both classification and value; that the amount was the product of rate and value, and that, therefore, an appeal from his decision as to amount of duties necessarily implied an appeal from his decision as to value. But since that time the Hevised Statutes bave been enacted. �Section 2930 re-enacts substantially the act of 1851. Sec- tions 2931 and 2932 contain substantially the fourteenth and fifteenth sections of the act of June 30, 1864. If the act of 1851, under the provisions of which a final appraisal had been regarded as a finality ever since its enactment, had been modified or repealed by the act of June 30, 1864, it seems as if the revisers and congress would have announced 6uch modification in plain terms; but, on the contrary, the finality on an appraisal is left in substantially the phrase- ology of the act of 1851, while the decision of the collector ia ����