Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/340

 THE SAKATOGA. 325 �it clear, also, that it must be held to fall equally within the intent of the act, and that for several reasons : �1. Because the languageof the act isplain and unambiguous; and according to the ordinary use and meaning of the words used it embraces this case. �The primary maxim for ascertaining the intent of a statute is to look firet of all to the language of the act itself. Unless some con- trary intent appears, its words are to be interpreted according to their ordinary use and meaning. In the case of Maillard v. Lawrence, 16 How. 251, the court says: "The popular and received import of words furnishes the general rule for the interpretation of public laws." If the language is unambiguous, and its application to the case in hand is apt, reasonable, and natural, the intent to include it ought not to be questioned; the plain sense of the words used is a suffi- cient evidence, as it is also the highest evidence, of the intent to embrace it. �Vattel, among his first maxims of interpretation, says, (B. 2, c. 17, §26;^:) �" It is not permitted to interpret what has no need of interpretation- When an act is conceived in clear and precise terms, — when the sense is man- ifest and leads to nothing absurd, — there can be no reason to refuse the sense which it naturally presents. To go elsewhere in search of conjectures, in order to restrain or extinguish it, is to endeavor to elude it. If this danger- ous method be once admitted, there will be no act which it will not render use- less." �In the case of Newell v. The People, 7 N. Y. 97, the late circuit judge of this court said : �" Whether we are considering an agreement between parties, a statute, or a constitution, with a view to its interpretation, the thing we are to seek is the thought which it expresses. To ascertain this the flrst resort in all cases is to the natural signification of the words employed, in the order and gram- matical arrangement in which the framers of the instrument have placed them. If, thus regarded, the words embody a deflnite meaning, which in- volves no absurdity and no contradiction between different parts of the same writing, then that meaning, apparent upon the face of the instrument, is the one which alone we are at liberty to say was intended to be conveyed. In sueh a case there is no room for construction. That which the words de- clare is the meaning of the instrument ; and neither courts nor legislatures have the right to add to or take away from that meaning." �In McCluskey v. Cromwell, 11 N. Y. 601, Allen, J., quoting the pas- sage last cited, also says : �" It is beyond question the duty of courts in eonstruing statutes to give effect to the intent of the law-making power, and to seek for that intent in ��� �