Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/704

 ^90. FEDERAL REPORTER. �they should be condemned by any decree which the court might law- fully make in the suit. �In the bond giyen for the vessel a printed form was used, which ^068 not contain the.-wordB inserted in the manuscript bond, and stricken out by the judge as above stated. �No question is or cto be raised as to the right and duty of the court to allow the atnendment to the libel. The decree stands, therefore, as the final decree of condemnation, lawfully made, and thus the very contingeney bas occurred upon which, by the terms of -this obligation, the bondsmen were to beoome liable. �But, independently of the fdregoing consideration, I entertain no doubt that the settled rule of the admiralty is that when a bond bas been given for property under seizure, and the property bas been delivered to the claimant, the bond stands in the place of and repre- sente the rem, and that whatevor amendments the cotirt- might law- fully allow if the property had remained in tho eustody of the mar- shall, it can equally allow without afiPectihg the liability of the bondsmen. Any other rule would be inconvenient and pernicious. �Libels are often necessarily drawn in haste, and with an imperfeet or mistaken conception bf the facts. A bond for value may be teud- ered at once. If this be done and the vessel restored to the claim-' ant, and if the libellant is from that moment deprived of all right to amend, except on pain of discharging the bondsmen and thus reri- defing the litigation' fru'itless,'it is evident that the grossest injustice might be done in cases where the property bas been removed frOm the jurisdiction and no reseizure can be made. The suggeation that the claimant and his sureties have agreed to be responsible only in case the property is condemned, "for the reasons and causes mentioned in the libel," involves a petitio principii. It is more aocurate to say that they have agreed to be responsible in case the court, in the due andordinary course of procedure, shall condemri the property; and the allowanoe of proper aniendments must be deemed to have been contemplated as a possible or probable inci- dent in the cause. In the case of Newell v. iVortora, 3 Wall. 257^ the libel had been amended by dismissing it as to a pilot who had been improperly joinedin a suit against the master and vessel, It was Argued then, as now, that the sureties "bound themselVes with ref- erence to this libel; that their contraet was stricti juris, and could not be extended by implication," But the court summarily overruled this objection, observing, in the language of Mr. Justice Story in The Schooner Harmony, 1 Gai. 123: "Every person bailing such property ��� �