Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/191

 DAELING ». TOWNBEND. 179 �the Buffering or procuring of his property to be seîzed within the meaning of the act. Wilson v. City Bank, 17 Wall. 473. But this was not a case of mere non-resistance. The debtors took active measures to hasten the seizure, and the perfect- ing of the inchoate lien which the defendants had aoquired by their attachments, and which, being within four months, would have been vacated by the filing of the bankruptcy peti- tion before issue of execution, if afterwards foUowed up by the appointment of an assignee; and theobvious intention of the debtors to enable the creditors to hasten the perfecting of their lien was actually carried into effeet, since, by reason alone of these offers to allow judgraents to be entered, the defendants were enabled, before the filing of the creditors' petition, to make the inchoate and contingent lien of their attachaient absolute by the levy of their executions. I should bave no hesitation, thercfore, but for the complications grow- ing out of the earlier executions, and their possible effeet in furnishing a different motive for the oiîers of judgment, in concluding that theîntent to give and to rcceive a preference was, upon the evidence, the only probable motive for the act. It is argued, however, that the circumstances under whicb the act was donc do show a different motive. It is argued that the property was already lost irrevocably to the estate by reason of its being held under levy of the prier executions, which neither the bankrupts nor their assignee could impeach ; that the property being already under advertisement for sale by the sheriff under those executions, the only effeet of the offers of judgment, and the hastening of the levy of the defend- ants' executions, was possibly to avoid the expense of two sales on execution instead of one, or to enable the sheriff to sell under ail the executions at once ; that the only question was to which of the execution creditors the proceeds should go ; that at the utmost the intent wa,8 tô give these defendants a preference over the earlier execution creditors, who would get the proceeds of the property if these defendants did not, and not over the creditors generaHy,;who in no event could receive it. The question thus presented is a serious and important ����