Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/346

 THE SARATOGA. 331 �on February 7, 1881, on further recommendation of the committee withdrawing the proposed amendment, the bill was passed without amendment as originally prepared. Gong. Reo. vol. 11^ pt. 2, p. 1521. �From this history of the progress of the bill to its passage it seema to me impossible to doubt that the words "seizure or" were not inserted as mere surplusage, or as a superfluous reference to the seizure which necessarily precedes a forfeiture; but that they were inserted ex industria for the very purpose of covering the liability of vessels to Seizure for penalties under section 3088, as well as for for- feiture under other sections. It is at the same time a good illustra- tion of the soundness of the legal maxim of interpretation above referred to, which requires that full effeet shall be given to all the words of a statute or other written instruments, whenever there ia subject-matter to which they may aptly refer. �It is urged by the libellant that the etfeot of the interpretation thus given to the act of 1881 will be to destroy the lien for penalties given by that act, and that if it had been the intention of congress to abolish that lien it would have been done by the use of other and more appropriate language than merely prohibiting "seizure." I do not percoive the force of this argument. Section 8088 does not use the word "lien." It provides that the vessel may be "held, seized, and proceeded against summarily by libel." Congress, in designing to exclude from this«liability the vessels of innocent owners, migbt doubt- less have declared that such vessel should not be "held, seized, or proceeded against by libel." But it is obvions, I think, tha,t such amplification of prohibitory language is unnecessary as well as un- Usual. In enacting the prohibition, the use of either of the three important words in section 3088, either "holding," or "seizing," or "libelling," would have been suE&cient. The word chosen in the act is the most significant of the three, the one which is most familiar and comprehensive, and which strikes most obviously at the root ot the particular evil complained of, viz., the seizure of the vessel. �In support of the libellant's contention that only cases of forfeiture and of seizure for the purposes of forfeiture are intended by the act of 1881, it is urged that the words "seizure and forfeiture, "in reve- nue law, have acquired a technical signification referring to the entire proceeding for the eondemnation of forfeited property, in which pro- ceeding seizure by the revenue officers is the first step; that the word "seizure," whenever used in title 34, means a seizure by reve- ��� �