Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/385

 370 FEDERAL REPORTER. �h'e sailed from a port in Maine for a voyage from thtince to Barbadoes and thence to Philadelphia ; and that on his arrivai at the latter port lie paid off and disoharged one of his crew without going before a sbipping commissioner. �John K. Valcntine, U. S. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff. �J. Warren Coulston, for defendant. �The court directed the jury to find a verdict for defendant, and su^j- sequently filed the following opinion : �Per Curiam. An examination of the Revised Statutes makes it very evident that section 4549 is to be qualified by section 4504. The act of June 7, 1872, providing for the appointment of shipping commissioners and for the further protection of seamen, requircd that the payment and discharge of seamen should in certain cases be made before a shipping commissioner, and that an agreement, in writing, in a certain specified f orm, should be entered into with every seaman shipped for a voyage. See the act, 17 St. at Large, 262. The act, by its terms, applied to vessels bound from a port in the United States to any foreign port, or if of 75 tons, or upward, bound from a port on the Atlantic to a port on the Pacific, or vice versa. It was provided, however, that the master might himself act as commis- fiioner in any customs district where no commissioner had been appointed, and that the act should not apply where the seamen are by custom or agreement entitled to participate in the profits orresults of a cruise or voyage, nor to coastwise or lake-going vessels that touch at foreign ports. See sections 12-22. By a supplement passed January 15, 1873, (17 St. 410,) the above proviso was enlarged by excepting from the operation of the act vessels engaged in the trade between the United States and the British North American posses- sions, or the West India islands, or the republic of Mexico. The Revised Statutes, in section 4504, embody all these provisos. The only question or doubt that can be raised, grows ont of the phraseol- ogy of section 4549, which declares generally that all seamen, dis - charged in the United States from merchant vessels engaged in voy- ages from a port in the United States to any foreign ports, or, being ■of 75 tons or upward, from a port on the Atlantic to a port on the ,Pacific, or vice yersa, shall be disoharged and receive their wages in the presence of a duly-authorized shipping commissioner, exeept in eases where some competent court otherwise directs, without any ref- erence to the excepting provisos. But if the master himself may not be regarded in certain casea as a duly-authorized shipping commis- sioner, in the terms of the section, there can be no doubt .that the ��� �