Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/939

THE ANN. 925 �peaee. Section 10 provides that the judge or justice of the peace shall either give the case an immediate hearing, or, at the instance of the parties charged, shall appoint a day within the next 10 days to hear the case, and on conviction shall fine the offenders not less than $50 nor more than $300, or sentence them to imprisonment in some house of correction ; and that the vessel used in such violation shall 'he held until said fine and costs are paid, and if the fine and costs are not paid within 20 days, the judge or justice shall deeree the ves- sel forfeited, and shall have authority to order any sheriff or constar ble to sell her, after giving 20 days' notice ; the proceeds to go to the payment of fine and costs, and the balance to the owner of the vessel. It is also provided that the owner, or any person convicted under the act, shall have the right of appeal to the circuit court of the.county. The act contains other and different provisions with regard to vessels owned wholly or in part by any non-resident of Maryland. �The first objection urged against this state law is that it is repug- nant to the declaration of rights and constitution of Maryland, by which in all criminal prosecutions every man is declared to be enti- tled to a triai by jury, (article 21,) and by which it is declared (arti- cle 23) that no man ought to be taken or imprisoned or deprived of life, liberty, or property but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land, �This is a question which it is the appropriate duty of the state tribunals to determine. In the recent case of State v. Green, the Maryland court of appeals, after full argument and careful consid- eration, sustained the constitutionality of the vagrant act of 1878, against which similar objections had been urged, and decided that these declarations of the bill of rights and constitution of Maryland were merely declaratory of rights long settled among our people by usage and the course of law, and were not intended, and had never been considered as intended, to prohibit the state from providing for the summary trial and imprisonment of vagrant and disorderly char- acters, or the enforcement by short imprisonments of mere police ordinanees. �It is to be noticed in this case that the forfeiture of the vessel was founded, not upon any sentence of imprisonment of the offenders, but upon the non-payment of the fine imposed upon them for violation of a law requiring a license. It is not, therefore, necessary to sus- tain that part of the law giving jurisdiction to the justice to punish the offenders by imprisonment in order to sustain the validity of the forfeiture of the vesseli ��� �