United States v. Wilcox/Opinion of the Court

We agree with the Court of Claims in the opinion that the act of Congress of July 20, 1868, c. 186, §§ 73, 74, was not intended to change the rule prescribed by the act of July 13, 1866, c. 184, § 24, 14 Stat. 153, as amended by the act of March 2, 1867, id. 473, for the allowance of commissions to collectors of internal revenue upon taxes collected by them for articles removed from one district to a bonded warehouse in another district. The purposes of the act were distinct.

The act of June 30, 1864, as amended by the ninth section of the act of July 13, 1866, enacted that manufactured tobacco might be removed from the place where manufactured to a bonded warehouse in another collection district without payment of the tax, under certain treasury regulations, and might be withdrawn from the bonded warehouse on payment of the tax, or removed for export to a foreign country without such payment. The warehouses provided were for two purposes,-one for the custody of tobacco designed for export, and the other for custody of tobacco designed either for export or for domestic consumption or sale. Whenever the tobacco was removed for the latter uses, and when, consequently, the tax was paid to the collector of the district in which the warehouse was situated, the proviso inserted by the act of 1866 divided the commissions on the tax between the collector of that district and the collector of the district from which the tobacco had been removed.

Such was the law when the act of 1868 was enacted. That act was plainly intended to throw around the removal of the manufactured tobacco greater security against evasion of payment of the tax upon it than had existed before. In no manner did it attempt to deal with the subject of collectors' commissions. Nor did it relieve collectors from any of the duties incumbent upon them before. We cannot better express our opinion of it than by adopting the language of the Court of Claims:--

'The only real changes effected were the substitution of export bonded warehouses for internal bonded warehouses, and requiring the owners of tobacco shipped from the manufactory to the warehouses to affix to each package an engraved stamp, for which he paid to the government through the collector of the shipping district twenty-five cents, and which was to be indicative of the owner's intention to export the package. But, notwithstanding that stamp, the owner was not bound to export the tobacco, but was permitted to withdraw it from bond for consumption on payment of the taxes due thereon, precisely as before.

'And it is upon this narrow construction that the defence in this case rests; that because under the act of 1868 tobacco could be shipped in bond from the manufactory only with a stamp thereon indicative of the intention of the owner to export it, while the language of the proviso of 1866 referred to articles 'shipped in bond to be sold in another district,' therefore the commissions of collectors were to be calculated on a different basis in the two cases, upon taxes collected in like manner upon tobacco shipped in bond from the manufactory and withdrawn for consumption from the bonded warehouse alike under both acts.

'In our opinion, the Fortieth Congress, in passing the act of 1868, c. 186, had no such intention and expressed no such will; and to adopt the construction contended for by the efendants would be to defeat the clearly established policy of Congress in this particular, by giving substantial force to language not material to the subject-matter legislated upon, and by establishing an incidental and accidental change of the law beyond the contemplation of the legislators.'

Judgment affirmed.