Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/198

 186 ÏEDEBAL BEPOETBR. �itors, the petitionersi substantially a suit ? We have no doubt it is. Petitions by assignees to compel lien creditors to dis- close the charaeter of pretended liens, and to ascertain liens, in Stickney v. Wilt, 23 Wall. 150, and in Milner v. Meek, 5 U. S. 252, are considcred and so adjudged to be substantially suits in equity. �Admitting it to be true, as claimed by the petitioners' coun- sel, that a creditor can prooeed by petition and voluntarily submit himself to the jurisdietion of the court, while an assignee cannot prooeed in that manner, it does not follow that the proceedihg may not be substantially a suit ; for, as bas been said, if a proceeding by petition by an assignee be a mit, there is no reason why a like proceeding by a creditor to determine the same issue is not also a suit. The issue being the same oetween tho same parties, if one is a suit in equity the other must also be one. But this lien is a maritime lien, against which no statute of limitations runs, and it is argued that it was not meant to abridge the operation of an admi- ralty lien by this limitation of actions; that it was not inteuded to rnake a new subject-matter, but to simply apply the limita- tion to the ordinary forms of action known in the common- la-w courts. This may be ingenious, but it does not appear to be founded in reason. The congress of the United States certainly had power to limit the prosecution of claims in ad- miralty as well as any other, and there is no reason wliy dis- puted contests over liens should be permitted to postpone the settlement of the bankrupt estate on aecount of any peculiar sacredness of a maritime daim, They are not excepted by the act, and we do not see why they should be. �I think there can be no doubt that the ascertainment or establishment of a lien, which, when paid, will absorb most if not ail the property covered by it, is the determination and settlement of the most vital question touching property trans- ferable to the hands of the assignee, and that the statute of limitations applies to a proceeding to enforce such a claim as a suit. The fact that the subject-matter of the controversy is a lien, does not prevent the proceeding being considered a suit. The supreme court, in Stickney v. Wilt, 23 Wall. 150, ����