Opinion of the Court. agents or servants or other persons properly employed by or under him, in the discharge of his official duties. Story on Agency, § 319. In Keenan v. Southworth, 110 Mass. 474, it was held, that a postmaster was not liable for the loss of a letter, occasioned by the negligence or wrongful conduct of his clerk. The court said: "The law is well settled, in England and America, that the postmaster general, the deputy postmasters, and their assistants and clerks, appointed and sworn as required by law, are public officers, each of whom is responsible for his own negligence only, and not for that of any of the others, although selected by him and subject to his orders." The court cited, to sustain this view, Lane v. Cotton, 1 Ld. Raym. 646; S. C. 12 Mod. 472; Whitfield v. Le Despencer, Cowp. 754; Dunlop v. Munroe, 7 Cranch, 242; Schroyer v. Lynch, 8 Watts, 453; Bishop v. Williamson, 2 Fairf. (Maine), 495; Hutchins v. Brackett, 2 Foster (22 N. H.), 252. To the same purport are Bailey v. The Mayor, 3 Hill, 531; Conwell v. Voorhees, 13 Ohio, 523, 543; Story on Bailments, $$ 462, 463; 1 Bell Com. 468, 5th ed.; 2 Kent Com., 4th ed., 610, 611. The very question here involved came before the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, in the case of Brissac v. Lawrence, 2 Blatchford, 121, in June, 1850. The defendant was the collector of the port of New York. Imported goods belonging to the plaintiff had been deposited in a custom-house warehouse, and were either lost or mislaid there, or were delivered to some person not entitled to them. At the trial it was sought to show carelessness on the part of the defendant, as the head of the custom-house department, in the manner in which the books of the warehouse were kept, and also that the book-keeper was a person of intemperate habits and unfit for the situation. On the other hand, it was proved that the books were kept in conformity with the mode usually adopted at the time for keeping books of that kind; that the intemperate book-keeper had been discharged; and that, during a period of nineteen months, out of two hundred thousand packages of goods which had Opinion of the Court. been received at the warehouse in question, only two packages had been lost. Mr. Justice Nelson, in charging the jury, submitted to them the question whether the collector had been guilty of personal negligence in respect to the goods. In the course of the charge, the court said: "The collector is not personally responsible for the negligence of his subordinates in the custom-house department, and, therefore, he is not responsible for the negligence of persons employed in the warehouse department. In order to charge the defendant with the loss, it is necessary that the plaintiffs should satisfy you, by affirmative and responsible testimony, that the collector was personally guilty of negligence in the discharge of his, duty, either by misdeed or by omission. This is a suit against the collector, who did not have charge of the goods; and, in order to render him liable, you must find him to have been guilty of personal neglect, misfeasance, or wrong. In view of the fact that the collector of New York has charge of all the business from which two-thirds of the entire revenue of the United States is collected, and has thousands of subordinates, and upon the evidence that only one package out of every one hundred thousand which passed through the hands of those subordinates has been lost, it is strange that this case has been so urgently pressed, with the idea that, upon any principle of equity, much less of law, there could be any liability on the part of the collector." The jury found a verdict for the defendant. (See, also, United States v. Brodhead, 3 Law Reporter, 95; Wharton on Agency, § 550.) The judgment of the Circuit Court is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court with a direction to grant a new trial. When a decree of foreclosure and sale of mortgaged property grants to the purchaser a credit for part of the purchase money, reserving a lien upon the property to enforce its payment, the court may, if the purchaser make default, and no rights of innocent third parties have intervened, order a resale of the property upon a rule to the purchaser to show cause why it should not be done. The decree of foreclosure in this case conferred upon the purchaser at the foreclosure sale no such right of acquiring the securities of the lower classes to be paid from the fund realized from the sale, as would authorize him, as such purchaser, to dispute, in a proceeding in the original suit for foreclosure to compel payment of the amount remaining due of the purchase money, the computations by the master, confirmed by the decree of the court, of the amounts which the creditors of the higher classes were to receive from the fund. In marshalling the classes of debts entitled to be paid out of a fund arising from a sale of mortgaged property under a decree of foreclosure, it is immaterial whether the master calculates the interest to a day prior to the date of the decree of sale, or up to that day, for the purpose of determining the principal sum that is to bear interest thereafter. THE decrees which are the subject of the present appeal were rendered in a suit brought to enforce certain deeds of trust and mortgage liens upon a tract of land in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, known as the White Sulphur Springs, in which it became necessary to sell the property for the payment of debts, and to marshall the liens on the same in the order of their priority. The bill was filed in March, 1868, by Charles S. Gay and his wife and others, creditors and lien holders, suing as well for themselves as for all other creditors having liens on the real estate, the title to which, subject to the incumbrances, was then vested in the White Sulphur Springs Company. A portion of the indebtedness was represented by negotiable bonds, with coupons representing accruing interest thereon, and some of these had been severed Statement of the Case. from the principal obligation and bought for value by other holders. On April 23, 1868, the cause was referred to a master to report the amount and priorities of all liens upon the property, whether created by mortgage, deed of trust, judgment, or otherwise. On April 21, 1876, the master filed a report giving a statement of the liens, the name of each creditor, with the amount of the principal debt due to each, the amount of the interest accrued thereon, and showing the total debt in each case, including principal and interest. The indebtedness was classified according to the order of priority of the liens. The first six classes of debts enumerated in this report are the only ones material to be considered, as in any event they absorb the whole amount for which the property was subsequently sold. In the aggregate they amounted to $299,857.88, of which $185,133.27 is principal, and $114,724.61 is interest. The interest was calculated to and aggregated as of the same date, October 15, 1875, as to all the debts except the debts in the first class known as the Singleton trust debt, upon which the unpaid interest, amounting to $36,000, was calculated to July 1, 1868; the master reporting that all interest accrued on this debt after that date had been paid. On April 28, 1876, the court by a decree confirmed this report, no exception having been taken thereto, the decree having in fact been entered by the consent of parties. That decree also contained a clause declaring that the interest on the Singleton debt of $36,000, which had remained unpaid from July 1, 1868, should constitute a principal sum, bearing interest from the date of the decree. There was no express declaration in the decree in respect to the computation of interest on the other debts after October 15, 1875. On May 5, 1877, a decree of sale was made in which there was no finding of any specific amount due, in default of the payment of which the property should be sold, but a recital that it appeared to the court "that it is now for the interest of all the parties to this suit and of all others interested in the subject involved therein, and there being now no objection, except on the part of the White Sulphur Springs Company, that Statement of the Case. there shall be a sale of the property known as the White Sulphur Springs property, and an application of proceeds of said sale among the parties entitled thereto, according to their legal rights and priorities." The decree appointed commissioners to make the sale, who were required to receive from the purchaser the payment of ten per cent of the purchase money in cash at the time of the sale, and for the residue giving a credit of one, two, three, four, and five years, in equal instalments, with interest thereon from the day of sale, and requiring good personal security for the payment of the first of said annual instalments, and retaining the title as further security for all of said instalments, or, in lieu of such personal security required of the purchaser for the first instalment of purchase money, the commissioners were authorized to receive from the purchaser as collateral security therefor any evidences of debt proved in the cause, and which it may appear to the commissioners will certainly be paid from the proceeds of the sale, and which may belong to the purchaser offering the same as collateral security, the just and fair amount of which collateral shall be determined by the commissioners. On May 4, 1878, no sale having been made, the court entered a decree reciting that the interest on three bonds known as Erskine bonds, being those reported in class No. 6 by the master, and being designated as No. 1, 2, and 3 of that class, for the year ending October 15, 1868, and on the Beard bond, designated as No. 4, in the same class, from October 15, 1868, to October 15, 1877, except four per cent for the two years ending October 15, 1875, and October 15, 1877, had not been paid; that the property was ample to pay these bonds, principal and interest, as well as all prior liens, and that a sale of the property had been postponed in the interest of subsequent liens; and adjudged that the said unpaid interest on said bonds should stand on the same footing with the interest on said bonds which is evidenced by coupons, and bear interest from the dates at which said interest became due until paid, and that the assignees and holders of the interest of said bonds for said years, or any part thereof which had been assigned and transferred by the holders of the bonds, should be entitled to have |