Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/847

 M'caETY V. 6TBAM-PB0PBLLEB CITY Oï NEW BEDFOED. 833 �agaînst the gamishee, and thathe hasbeen called on oreom- pelled to pay, it is not suoh a payment, merger, or discharge of the original debt as to be pleaded in bar." Moriam v. Rundlett, 13 Pick. 511. Here the plea is in bar, and npon the authority just cited must be held insufficient. �But, in proceedings like the present, the resuit of an abate- ment of the action is substàntially the same as the resuit of a bar. At the termination of the voyage the seaman and the ship are in the same port at the same time; if his suit, then comr menced, be abated, the value of the seaman's lien is redaced to a matter of mere chance, for, if the ship be allowed to depart, no one can say when, if ever, the seaman and the ship -will meet again in port. The ship may never retum, or, if she does, may prove to bave meanwhile been con- demned and sold in some subsequent proceeding in rem. In some actions at law the dif&culty arising from a prior gar- nishment of the debt sued on has been obviated by permitting a recovery, upon the condition that the plaintiff pay or seoùre the debt of the attaching crediter. No such condition is possible in cases of seamen, — a class so necessitous that an advance of future earnings has become a rule of the merchant service, — and it is a rule of the courts never to require security for costs of them, wanderers although they are. In other actions at law judgment has been rendered, but execution stayed until the debt of the attaching crediter has been satis- fied or secured. Such a course is impossible in this class of cases, for the ship cannot be detained at the wharf subject to judgment. These and other similar considerations, that will readily oecur to the mind, serve to show the extent of the ineonvenience and incongruity attendant upon the application of a rule that permits the garnishment of seamen's wages in an action at law. �In conclusion, I may add that the rule exempting wages from garnishment springs ont of the sharp necessity which the nature of his calling casts upon the seaman when he leaves his ship. A seaman is compelled to be improvident. While at sea the ship is his house, and his daUy bread he �v.4,no.9— 53 ����