Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/173

 166 FEDERAL REPORTER. �the purpose, became appropriaied to the payment of their demand to the exclusion of any other demand. It may be doubted, perhaps, whether the proceedings had will permit the intervenors to insist upon this position, because of the intervention of those libellants which haa been effected in the collision case. But any consideration of the effect of that intervention, or of the decree that was rendered in the col- lision case, is rendered unnecessary for the reason that I hold the claim for damages caused by the collision entitled to preference over the libellants' claim, without reference to any right obtained by the decree. �A good reason for a distinction between a claim for dam- ages arising eut of a collision occurring during the voyage, and a bottomry loan made upon the same voyage, prior to the happening of the collision, is stated in the case of The Almi (1 W. Eep. 118) in the foUowing language : �"The crediter in damage bas no option, no caution to exer- cise; the crediter on mortgage or bottomry has. He may consider ail possible risks,and give credit or not as he may think most advisable for his interest. He has an alternative ; the crediter in damage has not." I am aware that the pref- erence of a crediter in damage over a lender on bottomry has been considered by some to rest upon the general rule of the admiralty, that maritime liens are paid in the inverse order of their ineeption. The American, 6 Law Eep. U. S. 277. But it seems to me that the reason of the general rule fails when the demand competing with a bottomry arises out of a collision, for I cannot conçoive it possible to say that a prior lender on bottomry has derived any benefit from a subsequent collision. The value of the lender's security cannot be enhanced by a subsequent collision, nor could such a collis- ion in any way tend to preserve the lender's security for him, but the contrary. �I therefore prefer to rest my decree upon the ground above stated, rather than upon the general rule of the admiralty to which reference has been made. It may also be that a further ground for awarding a preference to the crediter in damage is to be found in public policy, as is intimated in the ����