Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/307

 SOO FEDEBAIj bbfobtbb. �to the orders and decrees of the court, and not for the pur- pose of satisfying the judgmenta of the court. �The property was taken and held, as the body might be taken and held, until performance of the order, and then the property or the avails of it went back to the owner. The avails might be appropriated to making good the wrong to the party donc by the disobedience, as a mode of punishment, but that only by the special order of the court, not by levy and sale, as an execution is levied upon property. �Here was no order or decree binding the defendants, at that time, to do anything. There was to be a decree, but none was perfected. Neither the body nor property could be taken to compel obedience, for there was nothing to be obeyed. The most that could be had was a lien for security merely, like an attachment or mesne process, such as is in use in Vermont and other New England states. So the writ ran to attaeh the property, and the marshal returned that he attached it, and he did not say that he did any more than to attaeh it; that is, he created a lien upon it, such as an attachment such as he made would create if made upon well- founded process. �The language of the writ was broad enough to cover an actual seizure and detention of the property by him, and had it been served in that manner he, and after him those who received possession of his property from him, would have it now ready to be dealt with ; or, if he or they had been dis- turbed in such actual possession of the property, a different question on a motion like this would have been presented. The lien he attempted to create, and which he did create, if any, was merely constructive, arising by force of law out of the fact of the lodgment of the copies in the town clerk's office, and not out of his personal presence as an officer of the law where the property was, exercising control over it. His right to the property depended upon the strength of the lien, whatever it was, and not upon his physical control of it in his officiai capacity. When the property was removed, the right to it by virtue of the lien, if there was any, was violated, but not the officiai authority of the marshal. He ����