Homer v. the Collector

Mr. Welch, for the importer: Our position is, that an exception has been made on the article of almonds in the second section of the act of 1857; and that by this section it is transferred to schedule G, under the act of 1846, which imposed a duty of but 8 p. c.; and we ask to show this by evidence that 'almonds' were 'fruit,' green, ripe, or dried, according to the commercial understanding of our markets, and so within that schedule. The general rule, which will be admitted, is, that Congress uses language in the revenue laws 'in its known and habitual commercial sense,' 'in that known in our own trade, foreign and domestic.' There are two qualifications to this rule. The first is, where Congress has, by its legislation, made it apparent that it did not intend to include a particular article under a name which, among commercial men, would include it. But this qualification has no application here. [The counsel here cited and commented largely on prior tariff acts to support this position.] The second is, when there is a known popular sense in which a word or phrase, designating some common article, is used accordantly with the etymology of the language and with the common understanding of all but a particular class. In those cases Congress may be presumed to use the word in that sense, and not in any peculiar commercial one. Maillard v. Lawrence,1 where it was decided that shawls were 'wearing apparel' in the sense of the revenue laws, is an illustration. But this qualification applies no more than the first one, for the term dried fruits in popular meaning includes almonds. They are popularly classed among the dried fruits of the table with raisins, dates, &c.: they are bought as such at retail shops with the same articles of dried fruit: they are defined in dictionaries as fruits, not in the general sense alone as fruits of the earth, but in the more limited sense as being the edible fruits of trees, shrubs, or vines: they are botanically treated as fruit in books of horticulture.2