Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/633

THE LAUBA. 619 �States bring suit. But this is too restricted a meaning of the word. When the section speaks of "rights granted to informers by such laws" it means rights granted to individuals, and net to the United States. The libellant is none the less an informer because he sues in bis own narae, and is entitled to the whole penalty. The object of the statute was to provide in favor of the party incurring the pen- alty a mode of mitigating it, and the mischief sought to be remedied was the same whoever was to receive the penalty. In section 976 the person to whom the whole of a penalty in a penal statute is directed to accrue, and who sues for it in his own name, is called an "ii - former." The suggestion that in section 5294 only a person who is entitled to part of a penalty is an informer is too narrow a view. If a person bas the whole of a penalty he bas all its shares, and his claims are fairly included within the words "the claims of any in- former to the share of any penalty." A person may be an informer without being a "plaintiff on a penal statute," in the sense of section 975 ; but a "plaintiflf on a penal statute," such as the libellant is, is an informer within section 5294. �The fact that by section 41 of the act of August 30, 1852, (10 St. ai Large, 75) in regard to steam-vessela, all the penalties imposed by it were given to any petson who would sue for them, and that no ppwer of remission of penalties was given by that act, bas no tend- ency to show that under the act of 1871 all penalties;. eomeof which are to go wholly to the informer and ^ome partly to the infohner and partly to the United States, are not within the power of remission given to the secretary. �The warrant of remission must be held to be a complete discharge of the penalties and the passage money iued ior in this case, and there must be a decree dismissing the libel and directing the clerk of this court to pay out to the proctor for the libellant his portion of the taxed costs of the. libellant in the district court, on deposit herein, and to distribute the remainder thereof among the officers of the dis- trict court entitled thereto, and ordering that the libellant pay to the claimant its costs in this court, to be taxed. �See 5 FED. Eep. 133. ��� �