the party for over fourteen years; nor is it unreasonable to provide that the time shall be reckoned from the date of the disappearance rather than from the date of the right of the absentee to possession of any property in question. That has always been the rule in case of presumption of death after seven years' absence and important rights are determined by it. Loring v. Steineman, 1 Met. 204; George v. Clark, 186 Massachusetts, 426; Butrick v. Tilton, 155 Massachusetts, 461; Marden v. Boston, 155 Massachusetts, 359; Stockbridge, Pet'r, 145 Massachusetts, 517; Bowditch v. Jordan, 131 Massachusetts, 321; Kelly v. Drew, 12 Allen, 107; King v. Fowler, 11 Pick. 302. Any statute of limitations which may have run while the owner is ignorant of his rights may work hardship but that is the penalty for absence without leaving an address, notifying friends or appointing an agent. Hurling v. Caw Valley Railway, 130 U. S. 559.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a petition by the next of kin of an absentee for the distribution of her property in the hands of the receiver; the appointment of the receiver, the taking of the property into his hands, and the present petition all being under Massachusetts Revised Laws, c. 144, and amendments to the same. The general scheme of the law is that in case of a person disappearing from Massachusetts to parts unknown, leaving no known agent in the State, but having an interest in property there, any one who would be entitled to administration may apply to the Probate Court for the appointment of the receiver. After due notice, a warrant to the sheriff to take possession of the property, and his return, a receiver may be appointed of the property scheduled in the sheriff's return, and the court is to find and record the date of the disappearance. By § 10, if the absentee does not appear and claim the property

within fourteen years after the recorded date, his title is barred; and by § 11 if, after the fourteen years, the property has not been accounted for or paid over, it is to be distributed to those who would have taken it on the day fourteen years after the said date. By § 12 if the receiver is not appointed within thirteen years after said date, the time for distribution and for barring actions relative to the property shall be one year after the date of the appointment instead of the fourteen years provided in §§ 11, 12.

On July 20, 1905, the plaintiff in error was appointed receiver of the property of Mabel E. Allen, and the date of the disappearance of the latter was found and recorded as 'within or prior to the year 1892.' The present petition was filed on March 18, 1907. The property in question was an interest of the absentee under the residuary clause of the will of Jonathan Merry, allowed and proved on December 8, 1828. Long after the estate was settled an administrator de bonis non was appointed in 1885 and in or about 1899 collected on account of French Spoliation Claims a sum in which Mabel Allen's share was $1633 and $22. This, with accumulations from interest, is the fund in controversy. The Probate Court made a decree of distribution, which was affirmed by the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth. 197 Massachusetts, 279. The receiver, having duly set up that the above mentioned §§ 10, 11 and 12 were contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment, brought the case to this court.

The plaintiff in error does not deny that the provisions for the appointment of a receiver are valid. Cunnius v. Reading School District, 198 U. S. 458. But he argues that the attempt to bar the absentee's title and to distribute his property is void for want of sufficient notice and other safeguards and because the time within which distribution may be made is arbitrary and unreasonable. There is reasonably careful provision for notice by publication before the appointment and the whole proceeding begins

with a seizure by the sheriff of the property mentioned in the original petition. American Land Co. v. Zeiss, 219 U. S. 47, 67. Tyler v. Judges of the Court of Registration, 175 Massachusetts, 71, 75. So the question put in the way most favorable for the plaintiff in error is whether a statute of limitations that possibly may allow little more than one year, is too short when the property is held in the quasi adverse hand of the receiver for that time, (what the court would do and how it would interpret the statute if other property fell in after the receiver was appointed is not material in this case). We cannot doubt as to the answer. If the legislature thinks that a year is long enough to allow a party to recover his property from a third hand, and establishes that time in cases where he has not been heard of for fourteen years and presumably is dead, it acts within its constitutional discretion. Now and then an extraordinary case may turn up, but constitutional law like other mortal contrivances has to take some chances, and in the great majority of instances no doubt justice will be done. See American Land Co. v. Zeiss, 219 U. S. 47, 67. Shorter time than one year has been upheld. Kentucky Union Co. v. Kentucky, 219 U. S. 140, 156. Turner v. New York, 168 U. S. 90. Terry v. Anderson, 95 U. S. 628. See Soper v. Lawrence Brothers Company, 201 U. S. 359, 369.

Decree affirmed.

Argument for the United States.

222 U.S.

UNITED STATES v. BALTIMORE AND OHIO SOUTHWESTERN RAILROAD COMPANY.

ERROR TO THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO.

No. 464. Argued October 19, 1911.-Decided October 30, 1911.

Courts are not inclined to make constructive crimes, and in this case the general rule that penal statutes must be strictly construed applies. If there be ambiguity, the character of the statute determines for strict or liberal construction, but where there is no ambiguity the words of the statute are the measure of its meaning.

A penal statute should not be construed as confounding unwillful with willful acts by uniting in criminality and penalties parties to whom no notice need be given with those to whom notice must be given. The provisions of § 2 of the act of March 3, 1905, 33 Stat. 1264, c. 1496, forbidding receipt for transportation of live stock from quarantined points in any State or Territory into any other State or Territory, do not apply to the receipt of live stock by a connecting carrier for transportation wholly within the State in which it is received, even though the shipment originated at a quarantined point in another State.

THE facts, which involve the construction of the Cattle Quarantine Act of March 3, 1905, 33 Stat. 1264, are stated in the opinion.

The Solicitor General for the United States:

The statute applies to the shipment of sheep from a quarantined State or Territory into any other State or Territory of the Union and to every carrier participating in such shipment, not alone the initial carrier who takes up the sheep in the quarantined district and carries them without, but as well to every succeeding connecting carrier doing any part of the work of transportation neces

222 U.S.

Argument for Defendant in Error.

sary to bring the shipment from its place of beginning to its place of destination.

Considering the statute in its entirety and the purposes for which it was enacted, it is applicable to interstate shipments of live stock from place of origin to place of destination.

As a part of the statute, too, the regulations made under it, which apply of course only to interstate shipments, must be taken into consideration. Certainly it was competent for Congress to authorize a regulation which was operative from the beginning to the end of the shipment. Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100; Kelley v. Rhoads, 188 U. S. 1.

The intention of the framers of the law was to authorize such a regulation; see the report of House Committee, No. 4200, 58th Cong., 3d Session, February 3, 1905, recommending the law in question as tending to control and eradicate the contagious diseases of animals in the United States; see also Regulations of Secretary of Agriculture of April 15, 1907, and August 16, 1909.

The act accomplishes what Congress intended and what its efficiency requires and it should be interpreted and enforced by the light of the fundamental rule for carrying out its purposes. Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S. 412. The act deals with the shipment always as an entirety.

Mr. George Hoadly, with whom Mr. Judson Harmon, Mr. Edward Colston and Mr. A. W. Goldsmith were on the brief, for defendant in error:

The statute is penal. United States v. Southern Railway Co., 187 Fed. Rep. 209, holding the statute to be remedial and not penal was error; and see St. L. Terminal Co. v. United States, 188 Fed. Rep. 191.

Not only does the statute impose a money penalty in favor of the United States, not of a party aggrieved, but