Nobody can forget that smuggled goods are liable to confiscation by proceedings _in rem_. This is a familiar instance. The calendar of our District Courts is crowded with these cases, where the United States are plaintiff, and some inanimate thing, an article of property, is defendant. Such, also, are proceedings against a ship engaged in the slave-trade. Of course, by principles of the Common Law, a conviction is necessary to divest the offender’s title; but this rule is never applied to forfeitures created by statute. It is clear that the same sovereignty which creates the forfeiture may determine the proceedings by which it shall be ascertained. If, therefore, it be constitutional to direct the forfeiture of rebel property, it is constitutional to authorize proceedings _in rem_ against it, according to established practice. Such proceedings constitute “due process of law,” well known in our courts, familiar to the English Exchequer, and having the sanction of the ancient Roman jurisprudence. If any authority were needed for this statement, it is found in the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of the _Palmyra_, where it is said:-- “Many cases exist where there is both a forfeiture _in rem_ and a personal penalty. But in neither class of cases has it ever been decided that the prosecutions were dependent upon each other; but the practice has been, and so this Court understand the law to be, that the proceeding _in rem_ stands independent of, and wholly unaffected by, any criminal proceeding _in personam_.”[19] The reason for proceedings _in rem_ is, doubtless, that _the thing_ is in a certain sense an offender, or at least has coöperated with the offender,--as a ship in the slave-trade. But the same reason prevails, although perhaps to less extent, in proceedings against rebel property, which, if not an offender, has at least coöperated with the offender hardly less than the ship in the slave-trade. Through his property the traitor is enabled to devote himself to treason, and to follow its accursed trade, waging war against his country; so that his property may be considered guilty also. But the condemnation of the property cannot be a bar to proceedings against the traitor himself, should he fall within our power. The two are distinct, although identical in their primary object, which is punishment.