Opinion of the Court 416 U.S. Forfeiture also resulted at common law from conviction for felonies and treason. The convicted felon forfeited his chattels to the Crown and his lands escheated to his lord; the convicted traitor forfeited all of his property, real and personal, to the Crown. See 3 W. Holdsworth, History of English Law 68-71 (3d ed. 1927); 1 F. Pollock & F. Maitland, History of English Law 351 (2d ed. 1909). The basis for these forfeitures was that a breach of the criminal law was an offense to the King's peace, which was felt to justify denial of the right to own property. See 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *299.20 In addition, English Law provided for statutory forfeitures of offending objects used in violation of the customs and revenue laws-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. Statutory forfeitures were most often enforced under the in rem procedure utilized in the Court of Exchequer to forfeit the property of felons. See 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *261-262; C. J. Hendry Co. v. Moore, 318 U. S. 133, 137-138 (1943). Deodands did not become part of the common-law tradition of this country. See Parker-Harris Co. v. Tate, 135 Tenn. 509, 188 S. W. 54 (1916). Nor has forfeiture necessity disappears, but the rule remains. The reason which gave rise to the rule has been forgotten, and ingenious minds set themselves to inquire how it is to be accounted for. Some ground of policy is thought of, which seems to explain it and to reconcile it with the present state of things; and then the rule adapts itself to the new reasons which have been found for it, and enters on a new The old form receives a new content, and in time even the form modifies itself to fit the meaning which it has received." The Common Law 5 (1881). 20 In 1870, England eliminated most forfeitures of those convicted of felonies or treason. 33 & 34 Vict. c. 23. 663 Opinion of the Court of estates as a consequence of federal criminal conviction been permitted, see 18 U. S. C. § 3563; Rev. Stat. § 5326 (1874); 1 Stat. 117 (1790). Forfeiture of estates resulting from a conviction for treason has been constitutionally proscribed by Art. III, § 3, though forfeitures of estates for the lifetime of a traitor have been sanctioned, see Wallach v. Van Riswick, 92 U. S. 202 (1876). But "[1]ong before the adoption of the Constitution the common law courts in the Colonies-and later in the states during the period of Confederation-were exercising jurisdiction in rem in the enforcement of [English and local] forfeiture statutes," C. J. Hendry Co. v. Moore, supra, at 139, which provided for the forfeiture of commodities and vessels used in violations of customs and revenue laws. See id., at 145-148; Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 623 (1886). And almost immediately after adoption of the Constitution, ships and cargoes involved in customs offenses were made subject to forfeiture under federal law,21 as were vessels used to deliver slaves to foreign countries,22 and somewhat later those used to deliver slaves to this country.23 The enactment of forfeiture statutes has not abated; contemporary federal and state forfeiture statutes reach virtually any type of property that might be used in the conduct of a criminal enterprise. Despite this proliferation of forfeiture enactments, the innocence of the owner of property subject to forfeiture has almost uniformly been rejected as a defense. Thus, Mr. Justice Story observed in The Palmyra, 12 Wheat. 1 (1827), that a conviction for piracy was not a prerequi 21 Act of July 31, 1789, §§ 12, 36, 1 Stat. 39, 47; see also Act of Aug. 4, 1790, §§ 13, 22, 27, 28, 67, 1 Stat. 157, 161, 163, 176. 22 Act of Mar. 22, 1794, 1 Stat. 347. 23 Act of Mar. 2, 1807, 2 Stat. 426. Opinion of the Court 416 U.S. site to a proceeding to forfeit a ship allegedly engaged in piratical aggression in violation of a federal statute: "It is well known, that at the common law, in many cases of felonies, the party forfeited his goods and chattels to the crown. The forfeiture did not, strictly speaking, attach in rem; but it was a part, or at least a consequence, of the judgment of conviction. . . . [T]he [Crown's right to the goods and chattels] attached only by the conviction of the offender. . . . But this doctrine never was applied to seizures and forfeitures, created by statute, in rem, cognizable on the revenue side of the Exchequer. The thing is here primarily considered as the offender, or rather the offence is attached primarily to the thing; and this, whether the offence be malum prohibitum, or malum in se . . . . [T]he 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." Id., at 14-15. This rationale was relied upon to sustain the statutory forfeiture of a vessel found to have been engaged in piratical conduct where the innocence of the owner was "fully established." United States v. Brig Malek Adhel, 2 How. 210, 238 (1844). The vessel was "treated as the offender," without regard to the owner's conduct, "as the only adequate means of suppressing the offence or wrong, or insuring an indemnity to the injured party." Id., at 233.24 24 Thirty years earlier, the Court upheld a forfeiture of a quantity of coffee which had been transferred to bona fide purchasers after violation of the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, upon reasoning that "[i]n the eternal struggle that exists between the avarice, enterprize and combinations of individuals on the one hand, and Dobbins's Distillery v. United States, 96 U. S. 395 (1878), is an illustration of how severely this principle has been applied. That case involved a lessee's violations of the revenue laws which led to the seizure of real and personal property used in connection with a distillery. The lessor's assertions of innocence were rejected as a defense to a federal statutory forfeiture of his entire property, for the offense "attached primarily to the distillery, and the real and personal property used in connection with the same, without any regard whatsoever to the personal misconduct or responsibility of the owner, beyond what necessarily arises from the fact that he leased the property to the distiller, and suffered it to be occupied and used by the lessee as a distillery." Id., at 401; see United States v. Stowell, 133 U. S. 1, 13-14 (1890). Decisions reaching the same conclusion have continued into this century. In Goldsmith-Grant Co. v. United States, 254 U. S. 505 (1921), it was held that the federal tax-fraud forfeiture statute did not deprive an innocent owner of his property in violation of the Fifth Amendment. There, the claimant was a conditional vendor of a taxicab that had been used in the removal and concealment of distilled spirits upon which the federal tax was unpaid. Although recognizing that arguments against the application of the statute to cover an innocent owner were not without force, the Court rejected them, saying: "In breaches of revenue provisions some forms of property are facilities, and therefore it may be said, that Congress interposes the care and responsibility the power charged with the administration of the laws on the other, severe laws are rendered necessary to enable the executive to carry into effect the measure of policy adopted by the legislature." United States v. 1960 Bags of Coffee, 8 Cranch 398, 405 (1814). 536-272 O - 75-48 Opinion of the Court 416 U.S. of their owners in aid of the prohibitions of the law and its punitive provisions, by ascribing to the property a certain personality, a power of complicity and guilt in the wrong. In such case there is some analogy to the law of deodand by which a personal chattel that was the immediate cause of the death of any reasonable creature was forfeited. To the superstitious reason to which the rule was ascribed, Blackstone adds 'that such misfortunes are in part owing to the negligence of the owner, and therefore he is properly punished by such forfeiture.' . . . "But whether the reason for [the forfeiture] be artificial or real, it is too firmly fixed in the punitive and remedial jurisprudence of the country to be now displaced." Id., at 510-511. See also United States v. One Ford Coupe Automobile, 272 U. S. 321 (1926) (Brandeis, J.); General Motors Acceptance Corp. v. United States, 286 U. S. 49 (1932) (Cardozo, J.). In Van Oster v. Kansas, 272 U. S. 465 (1926), the Court upheld, against a Fourteenth Amendment attack, a forfeiture under state law of an innocent owner's interest in an automobile that he had entrusted to an alleged wrongdoer. Judicial inquiry into the guilt or innocence of the owner could be dispensed with, the Court held, because state lawmakers, in the exercise of the police power, were free to determine that certain uses of property were undesirable and then establish "a secondary defense against a forbidden use ." Id., at 467. Plainly, the Puerto Rican forfeiture statutes further the punitive and deterrent purposes that have been found sufficient to uphold, against constitutional challenge, the application of other forfeiture statutes to the property of innocents.25 Forfeiture of conveyances that have been 25 But for unimportant differences, P. R. Laws Ann., Tit. 24, |