"It certainly is not to be regarded as a bond with a collateral condition, in which the jury are to assess the damages which the United States shall prove that they have sustained; for, according to that construction, the amount of damages would not depend upon the amount of the penalty described in the section, which is graduated according to the size of the vessel, but would depend upon the discretion of different juries, and larger damages might be given where the penalty was only $400, than in a case where the penalty was $2,000. This, obviously, is not the intention of the law; and the United States are entitled to recover the whole sum, for which the party is bound, if any one of the conditions are broken. Besides, how could the United States prove any particular amount of damages to have been sustained by them in a suit on this bond? What do they lose? It would be difficult, we think, by any course of proof or any process of reasoning, to show that the United States had sustained any particular amount of damages in a case of this description, or to adopt any rule by which the damages could be measured by a jury, or be liquidated by agreement between the parties. "The sum, for which the parties are to become bound, is, manifestly, a penalty or forfeiture, inflicted by the sovereign power for a breach of its laws. "It is not a liquidated amount of damages due upon a contract, but a fixed and certain punishment for an offense. And it is not the less a penalty and a punishment because security is taken before the offense is committed, in order to secure the payment of the fine if the law should be violated." Recurring now to the particular circumstances of the present case, with a view to the application of these principles and decisions, we are satisfied that the proper solution of the question now under examination is to be found in two principal considerations. The first of these is that it was not intended by the parties, the state of Rhode Island on the one hand, and the Boston, Hartford & Erie Railroad Company on the other, that the obligation given and accepted should be for an indemnity against any loss or damage expected to be suffered by the state, in the event that the railroad company should fail to build the railroad as required. It is found as a fact that no such loss or damage has in fact ensued. It is equally plain that none could possibly have arisen. The security is not to be extended to any supposed damage to private interests legally affected by the process of constructing the work. All damage of this kind to private persons was carefully provided for in other parts of the act. As to the state itself, the real party to the arrangement and contract, it could gain nothing in its political and sovereign character by the construction of the road; it could lose nothing by the default. If it could be supposed as possible that the state had in view the public interests of commerce and trade in the construc tion of the proposed railroad, and meant to provide for loss and damage to them by reason of its failure, the obvious answer is that no computation and assessment of actual damages on that account. would be practicable, leaving as the alternative that the state, in fixing the penalty of the bond in the statute, had established its own measure of the public loss. The question of damages and compensation was not, because it could not have been, in contemplation of the parties. There was no room for supposing that there could be any. To assume that the statute required this bond and security in this sense, in full view of the legal conclusion which it is said necessarily flows from its form, and that in the event contemplated, of the failure to build the road, all that remained to be done was that the state should hand back canceled the obligation and security it had been at such pains to exact, is to put upon the transaction an interpretation altogether inadmissible. It would have been, upon such an assumption, a vain and senseless thing, and however private persons may be sometimes supposed to act improvidently, we are not to put such constructions, when it is legally possible to avoid them, upon the deliberate and solemn acts and transactions of a sovereign power, acting through the forms of legislation. The conclusion, in our opinion, cannot be resisted that the intention of the parties in the transaction in question was that if the railroad should not be built within the time limited, the corporation should pay to the state, absolutely and for its own use, the sum named in the bond and secured by the deposited certificate of indebtedness. The supposition is not open that the penalty was prescribed merely in terrorem, to secure punctuality in performance, with the reserved intention of permitting subsequent performance to condone the default, for a distinct section of the statute (section 9) declares that in case of failure to complete the road within the time limited, the act itself should be void and of no effect. In the second place, we think that the sum named in the statute is imposed by it as a statutory penalty for the non-performance of a statutory duty. The obligation required is that the railroad company shall give a bond, with satisfactory security, that they will obey the law; that they will complete their road as required by it. The language evidently means that, in case they fail to do so, they shall forfeit and pay the sum named; and, in order to insure its payment, additional parties to the bond, as sureties, are required. It is admitted that if it does not mean this it does not mean anything, and we have already said that we are not at liberty to adopt that alternative. We must construe it ut res magis valeat quam pereat; and the rule of strictness, in the construction of penal statutes, does not require an interpretation which defeats the very object of the law. The state of Rhode Island was dealing with one of its own corporations, and it had perfect right to act upon its own policy and prescribe its own terms, as conditions of powers and privileges sought from its authority. For these reasons the decree of the circuit court is reversed, and the cause is remanded, with instructions to enter a decree in favor of the state of Rhode Island for the sum of $100,000, payable out of the fund in court, with so much interest thereon, if any, as has accrued on that sum since the first day of January, 1872, which is the date when the amount became due. And it is accordingly so ordered. (108 U. S. 401) In re Application of DEVOE MANUF'G Co. for a Writ of Prohibtion. (May 7, 1883.) JURISDICTION OF DISTRICT COURT, DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY-SUIT IN ADMIRALTY AND NEW JERSEY. The district court of the United States for the district of New Jersey has jurisdiction of a suit in admiralty, in personam, against a New York corporation, where it acquires such jurisdiction by the seizure, under process of attachment, of a vessel belonging to such corporation, when such vessel is afloat in the Kill van Kull, between Staten island and New Jersey at the end of a dock at Bayonne, New Jersey, at a place at least 300 feet below high-water mark, and nearly the same distance below low-water mark, and is fastened to said dock by means of a line running from the vessel and attached to piles on the dock. A vessel so situated is within the territorial limits of the state of New Jersey and of the district of New Jersey, and is not within the territorial limits of the state of New York or of the eastern district of New York. The subject-matter of the dispute as to boundary between New York and New Jersey explained, and the settlement as to the same made by the agreement of September 16, 1833, between the two states, as set forth in and consented to by the act of congress of June 28, 1834, (4 St. at Large, p. 708, c. 126,) interpreted. When congress enacts that a judicial district shall consist of a state, the boundaries of the district vary afterwards as those of the state vary. Petition for Writ of Prohibition. *S. C. 14 Fed. Rep. 183. *404 H. J. Scudder, for petitioner. Franklin A. Wilcox, in opposition. BLATCHFORD, J. The question involved in this case is as to the territorial jurisdiction of the district court of the United States for the district of New Jersey. In April, 1882, a libel in admiralty, in personam, for damages growing out of a collision, was filed in that court against the Devoe Manufacturing Company, a New York corporation. In October, 1882, process was issued by the court to the marshal, commanding him to cite the respondent if it should be found in the district, and, if it could not be there found, to attach its goods and chattels within the district. On this process the marshal seized a tug belonging to the corporation and made return that he had attached the tug, as its property. At the time of the seizure the tug was afloat in the Kill van Kull, between Staten island and New Jersey, at the end of a dock at Bayonne, New Jersey, at a place at least 300 feet below high-water mark and nearly the same distance below low-water mark, and about half a mile from the entrance of the Kill into the bay of New York, and was fastened to the dock by means of a line or fastening running from the tug and attached to piles on the dock, and was lying close up to the dock. The respondent, insisting that the tug, when seized, was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the eastern district of New York, and not within the jurisdiction of the district of New Jersey, applied to the court to set aside the service of the process. The court denied the application, holding that the tug, being, when seized, fastened to a wharf or pier on the western side of the Kill van Kull, was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the district of New Jersey. The respondent now applies to this court to issue a writ of prohibition to the district court, restraining it from exercising the jurisdiction so asserted. By section 2 of the act of September 24, 1789, "to establish the judicial courts of the United States," (1 St. at Large, p. 73, c. 20,) the United States were divided "into 13 districts, to be limited and called as follows: one to consist of the state of New York, and to be called New York district; one to consist of the state of New Jersey, and to be called New Jersey district;" and, by section 3, a court called a district court was created in each of said districts, and, by section 9, exclusive original cognizance was given to such district courts of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, within their respective districts. By these provisions the territorial limits of the respective states of New York and New Jersey were made the territorial limits of the respective judicial districts of New York and New Jersey. By section 1 of the act of April 9, 1814, (3 St. at Large, p. 120, c. 49,) it was enacted that the state of New York "shall be and the same is hereby divided into two districts, in manner following, to-wit, the counties of Rensselaer, Albany, Schenectady, Schoharie, and Delaware, together with all that part of the said state lying south of the said above-mentioned counties, shall compose one district, to be called the southern district of New York; and all the remaining part of the said state shall compose another district, to be called the northern district of New York." By virtue of this act all that part of the state of New York which was bounded on the line between New York and New Jersey fell within the southern district of New York. The boundary line between the states still formed the boundary line of jurisdiction between the districts. By section 3 of the act of April 3, 1818, (3 St. at Large, p. 414, c. 32,) the counties of Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Schoharie, and Delaware were transferred from the southern district of New York to the northern district of New York, but the boundaries of the southern district of New York were otherwise not altered. A dispute existed for a long time between the states of New York and New Jersey respecting the boundary line between them as to property and jurisdiction. The history and circumstances of this dispute, some particulars of which are to be found in the reports of the cases of State v. Babcock, 1 Vroom, 29; People v. Central Railroad Co. of New Jersey, 42 N. Y. 283; and Hall v. Devoe Manuf'g Co. 14 Fed. Rep. 183, are not material to the determination of this case, in the view we take of it, any further than to show what was the subjectmatter of the dispute. For the purpose of having it settled, the state of New Jersey filed a bill in equity in this court against the state of New York, in February, 1829. That bill sets forth the patent of March 12, 1664, from Charles the Second to the duke of York; the conveyance of lease and release by the duke of York, of June 24, 1664, to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, of land constituting the state of New Jersey; the division of the land, by various conveyances, into East New Jersey and West New Jersey; its settlement and the institution of proprietary governments therein, which continued until May, 1702, when the proprietors surrendered their right of government to Queen Anne; and the union of the two divisions into one province and government, under the crown of England, which continued until July 4, 1776. The bill sets forth |