Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/310

296 FEDERAL REPORTER. �pays hîs debts, or haa property enough outside of hia invest- ments in cotton to pay his debts, may do this, does it follow that an insolvent merehant who does net pay his debts, and bas not property enough left in the state to pay them, may invest his means in cotton, and remove it out of the state, when such cotton constitutes a material part of his prop- erty? �Confessedly, the latter case falls within the very letter of the statute ; and why not within its meaning and spirit ? A construction that would place the solvent merehant in such case on the same plain -with the insolvent merehant would nullify the statute, and that, tpo, not in the interest of mer- chants conducting their business according to the recognized rules of commercial business and integrity, but in the interest of that class who either will not or cannot comply with the plainest obligations imposed on merchants by law and sound mercantile usage. �It does not lie in the mouth of a merehant who is unable to pay his debts, and who refuses either to pay or secure his commercial paper, and who bas not property in the state suf- ficient to pay his debts, to say that because a solvent mer- chant may ship his cotton out of the state, that therefore he may do the same, although it may constitute a material part of his property. If a merehant in such a plight may do this, he may continue the process until the last dollar's worth of his property bas assumed the shape of cotton and been shipped out of the state. In such a case a creditor is not, under our statute, bound to stand by and be compelled to take the risk of the proceeds of such property returning to the state, and ail other risks incident to such business. �It would not do for a court to say that an insolvent mer- ehant who refuses to pay or secure his creditors for a want of ability to do so, is carrying on business as merchants usually do. Such a man ceases to be a marchant in the proper ac- ceptation of that term. He does not comply with his legal obligations, nor conform to sound commercial usage and cus- tom in the conduct of his business and in his dealings with his creditors, and bas no right, therefore, to demand that tha ����