Campbell vs. Case.
Yankton county, about twelre days before this action was commenced, and that the plaintiff has received damages to the amount of seventy-five dollars for the detention of said oxen."
And his conclusions of law were, that "one yoke of said oxen were exempt from attachment under the exemption law; that the seizure of said property by said Flick," etc., "as shown by his return of the warrant in the case of Bramble & Miner v. G. T. Campbell" (plaintiff) "was in violation of law, and wholly void; that the plaintiff is entitled to the possession of the oxen described in the complaint, and seventy-five dollars, his damages, for the unlawful detention of the same." And judgment was rendered accordingly.
It appears from the foregoing "facts" and "conclusions," that the opinion of the court was predicated upon the fact that the statute of 1862, of this territory, was not repealed by that of 1867-8; consequently, the officer, in making the attachment, not acting pursuant thereto, was a trespasser ab initio, and his proceedings thereon were void.
Whether the statute of 1862 in this regard is repealed, is a question of great practical utility in our territory, and, therefore, we have examined this question with as much care as the subject merits.
"Whether a new law, by implication, supersedes an old one upon the same subject cannot well be determined, in most cases, by any merely a priori rules of argument, or construction, but must depend very much upon the peculiar circumstances of each case, — the old and the new law — the mischief and the remedy." But it is sound law, we think, and no authorities can be found that will controvert it, that a subsequent statute revising the whole subject-matter of a former one, and evidently intended as a substitute for it, must operate to repeal the former, although it contains no words to that effect. Giddings v. Cox, 31 Vt. R., 607; Mason v. Waite, 1 Pick., 452; 12 Mass., Bartlett v. King, 537, 545, and cases there cited; Goddard v. Boston, 20 Pick., 407, 410, and cases there cited. These authorities and many others we might
