Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/151

 POUiQCK V. STEAM-BOAT LAUKA. 139 �only where the forfeiture is incurred without wllful negli- gence or intent to defraud. See original law on tbis subject, (St. 1797, c. 13; 1 St. 596.) Wbile tbis precise limitation is not imposed- on him in the present class of cases, yet, no doubt, bis power is to be exercised quasi judicially, and not as mere matter of grace, or arbitrarily, and witbout substan- tial grounds of equity and justice. It would, in my opinion, take from the statute a very important part of its beneficiai operation to hold that after suit brougbt by an informer in one of these cases like the present, -where the vi-bole penalty is given to him, the power. to remit or mitigate was gone. Probably in most cases the first knowledge •which the owners of the vessel would have of a violation of the statute by the master, whether intentional on bis part or not, vrould be the commencement of the action perbaps for an enormous pen- alty. Thus to give this construction to the act would in effeet defeat its purpose and intent, and the language of the act itself requires no such strict or limited construction. �Great relianoe is however placed by the learned counsel for the libellant upon the point made by him that the plaintîff in a popular action — ^that is, one who sues for a penalty given to any person suing for the same — is not properly speaking "an informer," and hence it is argued that as the statute expressly provides that the rights of an "informer" are held subject to the power of the secretary to remit or mitigate the penalty at any time before the informer's claim to a share of the penalty shall have been determined by a court of compe- tent jurisdiction, it cannot have been intended that a plain- tifif thus suing on his own behalf sbould hold bis right to the penalty subject to the same liability to bave it eut off by remission. This argument, however, proceeds upon a mis- take as to the meaning of the word "informer," The plain- tiff in a popular action is an "informer," as that word is understood in the law and used in the statutes of England and of this country. Thus Blackstone says, speaking of stat- utory penalties : "The usual application of these penalties or forfeitures is either to the party aggrieved, or else to any of thô queen's subjects in general. But more usually the for- ����