Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/676

 662 VEDEBAL BBPOBTEB. �it was necessaryand for the interest of ail concerned; but the effect of Buch sale to discharge liens is the same. The Amelie, 6 Wall. 18. �In the case under consideration none of these objections are taken to the validity of the sale, but it is insisted that it can- not be held to have discharged the vessel of liens which the court making the sale had no jurisdiction to enforce. I have found no case, exeept possibly that of The Angelique, (17 Law Eep. 104, since expressly overruled,) which lends countenance to this proposition. Upon principle, it seems to me wholly nntenable. It is true the vessel was originally condemned, in part at least, upon a claim for ship-keepers' fees, which would not in this country be considered to import a maritime lien. The Thomas Scattergood, Gilpin, 1 ; The Havana, 1 Sprague, 402; The Island City, 1 Low. 375; The Sarah Jane, 2 Am. Law Eev. 450; Qurney v. Crockett, Abb. Ad. 493. But this was a question exclusively for the consideration of the maritime court under the laws of Canada, and the pre- sumption is conclusive that the facts necessary to give that court jurisdiction existed. Hudson v. Questier, 6 Cr. 281; Comstock v. Crawford, 3 Wall. 396. To say that the judicial sale of a vessel frees her only from such liens as the court making the sale had jurisdiction to enforce by original process, is a practical deniai of the principle that such a sale vests a cleat title in the purchaser. This would make the validity of the sale depend, not upon the power of the court to condemn and sell, but upon its authority to assume jurisdiction of ail claims which, by the law of another country, might be liens upon her. There are probably no two countries in which the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts is identically the same. That of our own courts does not extend to ail cases which wouldfall within such jurisdiction accordihg to the civil law, and the practices and usages of continental Europe. By the codes of most civilized nations the cost of construction, the wages of ship-keepers, the rent of warehouses for the storage of her tackle and apparel, money lent to the eaptain for the use of the vessel, are ail ranked among privileged debts. In ����