The Massachusetts Spy, And Worcester County Advertiser

A Novel Proceeding. Three men were committed to the jail in this town last week, under very unusual, if not extraordinary circumstances. Two or three weeks ago, Timothy Greene & Sons of Pawtucket, made an assignment of a large amount of property, some of which was in this State and some in Rhode Island, to assignees residing in Rhode Island. It is provided in the Deed of assignment, we understand, that the property assigned shall be disposed of by the assignees, and from the proceeds, the creditors of the assignors are to be paid the whole of their claims, if the property should bring enough; otherwise to be paid in ratable proportions. The Assignees accepted the trust, and the property was delivered to them. Subsequently a writ was sued out by one of the creditors of T. Greene & Sons for about two thousand dollars, and placed in the hands of a Deputy Sheriff of this county for service. The creditor, Sheriff, and an aid, obtained possession (by breaking a glass and entering a window) of a Cotton Factory in this county named in the assignment, attached it and the machinery it contained, and kept possession. While thus in possession the assignees sued out a writ returnable before the United States Circuit Court, at Boston, laying their damages at fifty thousand dollars, despatched the Deputy Marshal from Boston, who made service by attaching the bodies of the Sheriff, creditor and aid, before named, and committing them to prison where they still remain. Several persons, we are informed, were offered as bail for the appearance of the persons imprisoned at Court, but they were not satisfactory to the assignees or marshal. The persons thus offered are said to be men of responsibility for a considerable amount, though not perhaps worth $50,000, the sum required as bail.

If a misrepresentation of law, allowing it to be so, is to be visited thus heavily with impunity upon persons endeavoring to obtain their honest dues, it has surely become a hazardous business both for creditors and law officers to attempt to secure debts from contested property.

After the above was in type we learnt that the Sheriff and others, were released from prison by the Assignees. The attachment of the Factory was previously relinquished.