612
Opinion of the Court
cheated to his lord; the convicted traitor forfeited all of his property, real and personal, to the Crown." Calero-Toledo, 416 U. S., at 682. Such forfeitures were known as forfeitures of estate. See 4 W. Blackstone, at *381. These forfeitures obviously served to punish felons and traitors, see The Palmyra, 12 Wheat. 1, 14 (1827), and were justified on the ground that property was a right derived from society which one lost by violating society's laws, see 1 W. Blackstone, at *299; 4 id., at *382.
Third, "English Law provided for statutory forfeitures of offending objects used in violation of the customs and revenue laws." Calero-Toledo, 416 U. S., at 682. The most notable of these were the Navigation Acts of 1660 that required the shipping of most commodities in English vessels. Violations of the Acts resulted in the forfeiture of the illegally carried goods as well as the ship that transported them. See generally L. Harper, English Navigation Laws (1939). The statute was construed so that the act of an individual seaman, undertaken without the knowledge of the master or owner, could result in forfeiture of the entire ship. See Mitchell v. Torup, Park. 227, 145 Eng. Rep. 764 (Ex. 1766). Yet Blackstone considered such forfeiture statutes "penal." 3 W. Blackstone, at *261.
In Calero-Toledo, we observed that statutory forfeitures were "likely a product of the confluence and merger of the deodand tradition and the belief that the right to own property could be denied the wrongdoer." 416 U. S., at 682. Since each of these traditions had a punitive aspect, it is not surprising that forfeiture under the Navigation Acts was justified as a penalty for negligence: "But the Owners of Ships are to take Care what Master they employ, and the Master what Mariners; and here Negligence is plainly imputable to the Master; for he is to report the Cargo of the Ship, and if he had searched and examined the Ship with proper care, according to his Duty, he would have found the Tea . . . and
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