"if any person shall knowingly and willfully obstruct or retard the passage of the mail, or of any driver or carrier, or of any horse or carriage carrying the same," he shall suffer a penalty. The charge was that the defendants retarded the passage of one Farris, a carrier of the mail, while he was engaged in the performance of his duty, and also in like manner retarded the steamboat Buell, at that time engaged in carrying the mail. They pleaded that Farris had been indicted for murder by a court of competent jurisdiction, that a bench warrant had been issued and placed in the hands of the defendant Kirby, the sheriff of the county, commanding him to arrest Farris, and that, in obedience to this warrant, he and the other defendants, as his posse, entered upon the steamboat and arrested Farris, and used only such force as was necessary to accomplish the arrest. It was held by the Supreme Court that the seizure of Farris was not an obstruction of the mail, or a retarding of the passage of a carrier of the mail, within the meaning of the act. Again, a statute of New York prohibited any sheriff or deputy sheriff, or any one for them, from purchasing any property at any execution sale, and declared void all purchases so made. In an action of ejectment, it appeared that certain premises had been sold by one deputy sheriff, on an execution issued under a judgment owned by another deputy of the same sheriff, and were bid off by the deputy who owned the judgment. It was contended that, under the statute, the sale was void. Plainly the case came within the letter of the law. But it was held that the statute should not apply, because the manifest object of the law was to prevent abuse, and to prohibit sheriffs and their deputies in their official capacity from being purchasers at their own sales, and thus being induced to act corruptly in relation to them, but it could never have been intended to place those persons in a worse situation than others as to the collection of their own demands.44 Again, it is ruled that the statute of frauds, which requires certain contracts to be in writing, and the consideration expressed therein, applies to 44 Jackson ex dem. Scofield v. Collins, 3 Cow. (N. Y.) 89. See executory contracts only, and not to instruments which of themselves pass the estate by words of grant, assignment, surrender, or declaration of trust.45 And the words "beyond seas," in a state statute of limitations, copied from an English act without due attention to the consequences of incorporating these terms without qualification, have been construed to mean "out of the state." 40 So although a law exempts from execution only such tools of a mechanic as are "necessary to his use and used by him in his trade," a temporary stoppage of his work will not forfeit the exemption; for the object of the law is to prevent those who have become unfortunate from being deprived of the means of making a living, and it must be presumed to contemplate that the loss of all that is not exempt may cause at least a temporary suspension of business. So again, where a statute authorized the conveyance, by a certain county to the state, of certain lands in such distinct lots or parcels "as the said county shall now hold by virtue of tax deeds issued upon sales for delinquent taxes heretofore made," it was held that the act should be construed not to apply to lands of which the tax deeds held by the county were void on their face, although there were in fact no lands to which the act, thus construed, could apply.18 In pursuance of the principle of construing a statute according to its spirit (and also with the help of the presump 45 Cruger v. Cruger, 5 Barb. (N. Y.) 225. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. Dig. § 261. 46 Murray v. Baker, 3 Wheat. 541, 4 L. Ed. 454; Davie v. Briggs, 97 U. S. 628, 24 L. Ed. 1086; Mason v. Johnson, 24 Ill. 159, 76 Am. Dec. 740; Earle v. Dickson, 12 N. C. 16; Smith v. Bartram, 11 Ohio St. 690; Galusha v. Cobleigh, 13 N. H. 79; Hulburt v. Merriam, 3 Mich. 144; Shreve v. Whittlesey, 7 Mo. 473; Mason v. Union Mills Paper Mfg. Co., 81 Md. 446, 32 Atl. 311, 29 L. R. A. 273, 48 Am. St. Rep. 524; Forbes' Adm'r v. Foot's Adm'r, 2 McCord (S. C.) 331, 13 Am. Dec. 732; Wakefield v. Smart, 8 Ark. 488; Bedford v. Bradford, 8 Mo. 233; Bank of Alexandria v. Dyer, 14 Pet. 141, 10 L. Ed. 391. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. Dig. § 261. 47 Harris v. Haynes, 30 Mich. 140. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. Dig. § 261. 48 Haseltine v. Hewitt, 61 Wis. 121, 20 N. W. 676. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. Dig. § 261. tion that the legislature never intends to make an unnecessary change in the law), it is held that a penal or criminal statute will not be extended to cases not plainly within its intention. If the law declares in general and unqualified terms that the doing of a given act shall be a felony or misdemeanor, or shall be attended with other penal consequences, still it will not be understood as applying to a case where the act was justifiable or excusable on grounds generally recognized by law. This is illustrated by the case supposed by some of the older writers, where a statute should make it a felony to "break from prison." Yet if the prison should be on fire, and a prisoner should break out, not to regain his liberty, but to save his life, he would not be guilty under the statute. As they put it, "he shall not be hanged because he would not stay to be burned." An important branch of this rule, or corollary from it, may be stated as follows: As the criminal law generally requires an evil intent, or guilty mind, to make any act a criminal of fense, and as it is not to be supposed that the legislature intended to abrogate this rule unless by the most explicit language, if an act provides, generally, that the commission of a given act shall be a crime, or that "any person" who does the act shall be guilty of a crime, still the courts will understand that it could not have been intended to apply to the case of a person incapable of a criminal intention, such as a young child, a madman, or an idiot, and therefore, although such persons may be within the letter of the statute, an exception will be made in their favor, in accordance with the reason of the case and the spirit of the law. So, without reference to the capacity of the person, it may be suffi 49 491 Hale, P. C. 706; Regina v. Moore, 3 Car. & K. 319; Regina 7. Tolson, L. R. 23 Q. B. Div. 168. It should be observed that modern statutes generally provide against the possibility of this question arising in specific cases, by declaring that the act denounced shall be a crime when done "willfully," "maliciously,” or "knowingly." But it should also be noticed that the words of the act may be so clear and specific as to negative the idea that any exception whatever was intended. And in such cases, the courts have no discretion. They must enforce the law as they find it. Sec cient to take a case out of the statute that the element of willfulness or malice was wanting. Thus, in Connecticut, where a statute provided that if "the owner of any ram shall suffer him to go at large," he should be subject to a penalty, it was said that to "suffer" a ram to go at large, or out of the owner's enclosure, implied consent or willingness of the mind, and that although the statute intended to enforce strict care on the part of the owner in restraining his ram, it did not require such a degree of care as would amount to an obligation on him to restrain the animal, at all events, unless prevented by some uncontrollable cause, nor any greater care than is usually taken by careful and prudent farmers in like cases.50 On a similar principle, it is held that where a statute gives punitive damages, or double or treble damages, against one who cuts timber growing on the land of another, without the latter's consent, and converts it to his own use, the law should be confined to cases where some element of willfulness, wantonness, carelessness, or evil design enters into the act. And therefore it does not include the case of a corporation which enters upon the lands of another and cuts trees, under a claim of the right of eminent domain, although, in consequence of the failure of the corporation to give bond or make compensation, as required by law, the taking of the land was a trespass.51 And where a statute imposes liability without qualification (as, where it requires railroad companies to fence their tracks, and makes them liable for injuries caused by the want of a fence or its defective condition), it may be construed as intended to im 50 Selleck v. Selleck, 19 Conn. 501. Compare Hall v. Adams, 1 Aik. (Vt.) 166. "No man," says the court in Maryland, “incurs a penalty unless the act which subjects him to it is clearly both within the spirit and letter of the statute. Things which do not come within the words are not to be brought within them by construction; the law does not allow of constructive offenses or of arbitrary punishment." Cearfoss v. State, 42 Md. 403. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. Dig. § 261. 51 Endlich, Interp. § 129; v. Goodlander, 98 Pa. 353; Cohn v. Neeves, 40 Wis. 393; Kramer Yoder, 112 Pa. 136, 4 Atl. 42. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. Dig. § 261. pose liability in case of negligence only. 52 As another deduction from the same principle, it is said that an act done in the honest assertion of a right, which would be good in law if well founded in fact, but which proves unfounded in fact, would not fall within a statute which prohibited it under a penalty, unless, indeed, the penalty was in the nature simply of compensation for a civil injury. So, if a man cut down a tree or demolished a house standing on land of which he was in undisturbed possession and believed himself to be the owner, he would not be punishable under statutes which prohibited such acts in general terms, although it turned out that his title was bad and the property was not his.53 There may also be cases in which ignorance or a mistaken belief in regard to a matter of fact will so far negative the existence of a guilty intent as to take the case out of the comprehensive terms of the statute. In a certain English case, it appeared that a statute "for the better prevention of accidents or injury on railways from the unsafe and improper carriage of certain goods," enacted that every person who should send gunpowder or similarly dangerous articles by the railway should mark or declare their nature, under a penalty. It was held that a guilty knowledge was essential to constitute the crime. And accordingly, an agent, who had sent some cases of dangerous goods by a railway, without mark or declaration, not only in ignorance of their nature, but being misinformed of it by his principal in answer to his inquiries, was not liable to the penalty, on the ground that his ignorance, under such circumstances, proved the absence of a guilty intention. And yet he was under no legal duty to send the goods, and he might have refused to do so without satisfying himself by inspection as to their nature. But it should be carefully remarked. 52 Murray v. New York Cent. R. Co., 3 Abb. Dec. (N. Y.) 339. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. Dig. § 261. 53 Maxwell, Interp. (2d Ed.) 116; Raym. 900. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. § 261. 54 Hearne v. Garton, 2 El. & El. 66. Regina v. Burnaby, 2 Ld. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. Dig. See Gordon v. Farquhar, Peck (Tenn.) 155. See "Statutes," Dec. Dig. (Key No.) § 183; Cent. |
