more open to punishment than he was at common law. I think that the word "receive," with respect to stolen goods, should be construed with reference to the word "harbor," applied to the thief. If a man harbors the stolen goods, knowing them to be stolen, for the purpose of aiding the thief, he is liable under the statute as a receiver. If he is the owner of a stable, and authorizes thieves to deposit stolen property on the premises, he would be liable in like manner; and it seems to me that he is not the less liable because the thieves remain there also. If they bring the property there with his consent, he is, I think, guilty of receiving it. The earlier statutes did not contemplate that there must be any bargain or transfer of the goods to a man to constitute him a receiver. In St. 29 Geo. II, c. 30, it was made an offense to leave the window, door, or shutter of any premises open at night for the purpose of offering a thief a place of deposit for any stolen lead or other metal.

On both these grounds I am of opinion that the conviction is right.3 COLERIDGE, J. I think, also, that the conviction is wrong. In my opinion, "receiving" must import possession, actual or constructive. I cannot find either here. I think, therefore, that the conviction is wrong. It is of great importance that in the administration of the criminal law we should proceed upon broad principles of construction, intelligible to common understandings. Conviction reversed."

REGINA v. WOODWARD.

(Court of Criminal Appeal, 1862. 9 Cox, C. C. 95.)

Case reserved for the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeal. At the Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the County of Wilts, held at Marlborough, on the 16th day of October, 1861, before me, Sir John Wither Awdry, Bart., and others, my fellows, Benjamin Woodward, of Trowbridge, in the county of Wilts, dealer, was found guilty of receiving stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen, and was thereupon sentenced to nine calendar months' imprisonment with hard. labor, and the prisoner now is undergoing his sentence.

The actual delivery of the stolen property was made by the prin

8 Part of this opinion is omitted. Campbell, C. J., and Williams and Cresswell, JJ., delivered concurring opinions.

4 Part of this opinion is omitted.

5 Compare: State v. Scovel, 1 Mill, Const. (S. C.) 274 (1817); State v. Stroud, 95 N. C. 626 (1886). In State v. St. Clair, 17 Iowa, 149 (1864), the indictment being for concealing stolen property, Lowe, J., said: "It is not necessary that the evidence should show that he had physical possession of it himself and concealed it with his own hands. But if he was present, knew that it was stolen property, and saw it hid by another, and kept silent, and refused to give information to the officers searching for the same, such conduct, unexplained, makes him as guilty in law as the party whose hands actually secreted the goods."

cipal felon to the prisoner's wife, in the absence of the prisoner, and she then paid 6d. on account; but the amount to be paid was not then fixed. Afterwards the prisoner and the principal met and agreed on the price, and the prisoner paid the balance.

Guilty knowledge was inferred from the general circumstances of the case.

It was objected that the guilty knowledge must exist at the time of receiving, and that when the wife received the goods the guilty knowledge could not have come to the prisoner.

The court overruled this objection, and directed the jury that until the subsequent meeting, when the act of the wife was adopted by the prisoner and the price agreed upon, the receipt was not so complete as to exclude the effect of the guilty knowledge.

If the court shall be of opinion that the circumstances before set forth are sufficient to support a conviction against the prisoner for the felonious receipt, the conviction is to stand confirmed; but if the court shall be of a contrary opinion, then the conviction is to be quashed. J. W. AWDRY.1

ERLE, C. J. The argument of the learned counsel for the prisoner has failed to convince me that the conviction was wrong. It appears that the thief brought to the premises of the prisoner the stolen goods. and left them, and that sixpence was paid on account of them by the prisoner's wife; but there was nothing in the nature of a complete receipt of the goods until the thief found the husband, and agreed with him as to the amount, and was paid the balance. The receipt was complete from the time when the thief and the husband agreed. Till then the thief could have got the goods back again on payment of the sixpence. I am of opinion, therefore, that the conviction should be affirmed.2

WILDE, B. I read the case as showing that the wife received the goods on the part of the prisoner, her husband, and that act of hers. was capable of being ratified on the part of the prisoner. If so, that makes the first act of receiving by the wife his act. In the case of Reg. v. Dring and Wife, the only statement was "that the husband adopted his wife's receipt," and the court thought the word "adopted" capable of meaning that the husband passively consented to what his. wife had done, and on that ground quashed the conviction. But here the prisoner adopted his wife's receipt by settling and paying the amount agreed on for the stolen goods.

MELLOR, J., concurred.

Conviction affirmed.

1 The argument of Broderick, for the prisoner, is omitted.

2 The concurring opinions of Blackburn and Keating, JJ., are omitted.

SECTION 3.-THE GUILTY KNOWLEDGE.

FRANK v. STATE.

(Supreme Court of Mississippi, 1889. 67 Miss. 125, 6 South. 842.)

Appellant was indicted for receiving stolen goods, a lot of car brasses, knowing them to be stolen.1

CAMPBELL, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

It is true, as held in Sartorious v. State, 24 Miss. 602, that it is not sufficient, to convict the prisoner of receiving goods knowing them to be stolen, to show that he stole them; but where circumstances warrant the conclusion that they were stolen by another, and they are traced to the possession of the defendant, under circumstances sufficient to make him believe they were stolen, this is sufficient to uphold a conviction. By knowing them to be stolen is not meant that the defendant should personally have witnessed the theft. If the transaction is such as to convince him, or as should do so, that the things were stolen, and he received them, he has knowledge to make him guilty. The evidence justifies the verdict of the jury. We find no error in the instructions. The assumption in one of them that the goods were stolen by another than Frank, in view of the evidence, which made this indisputable, is not ground for complaint. Affirmed.2

STATE v. CAVENESS.

(Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1878. 78 N. C. 484.) Indictment for larceny, with a count for receiving, etc., tried at fall term, 1877, of Randolph superior court, before Buxton, J.

BYNUM, J. This case is before us on the appeal of the defendant from the refusal of the court below to give him a new trial for alleged errors which we will specify and dispose of in their order.3

A more serious question is whether it was not the duty of the court to have instructed the jury that there was no evidence to convict the defendant upon the second count. Assuming that all the material evidence is set out in the case, the sum of it is, touching the second count, that the property was stolen one night and found next morning in the defendant's stable; that he was not then at home, and, in point of fact, was in another county, 40 miles distant, and did not return un

1 Part of this case is omitted.

2 Accord: Reg. v. White, 1 Fost. & F. 665 (1859); Murio v. State, 31 Tex. Cr. R. 210, 20 S. W. 356 (1892); State v. Feuerhaken, 96 Iowa, 299, 65 N. W. 299 (1895).

Part of the opinion only is printed.

.

til the second day after the occurrence. He certainly did not receive the property until his return, as there is no evidence of previous guilty knowledge or connivance. To be guilty, he must have known at the moment of receiving it that it had been stolen, and he must at that time have also received it with a felonious intent. There is no evidence that he had any knowledge then imparted to him of the circumstances under which the property was found upon his premises, communicating to him notice of the felony; and his subsequent open and notorious user, and both previous and subsequent claim of property as his own, are inconsistent with felonious intent at the time of receiving, which is necessary to constitute guilt upon the second count.

As, however the evidence is not fully stated, and neither the attention of the court nor counsel seems to have been directed to this infirmity in the case, we do not rest our decision granting a new trial upon this point, but upon the error of the court in respect of the seventh exception.

There is error.

Venire de novo.

SECTION 4.-THE INTENT.

REX v. DAVIS.

(Gloucester Assizes, 1833. 6 Car. & P. 177.)

The prisoners, who were father and daughter, the former being a pawnbroker at Cheltenham, were indicted as receivers on several indictments, which charged them with receiving sheets and various articles of linen, the property of Thomas Liddell. It appeared that the goods laid in the first indictment were found, together with many other goods of the prosecutor, at the house of the elder prisoner, marked with his mark.

GURNEY, B. If the receiver takes without any profit or advantage, or whether it be for the purpose of profit or not, or merely to assist the thief, it is precisely the same.2

The prisoners were acquitted on the merits.

1 Only so much of the case as relates to intent is printed.

2 Accord: State v. Rushing, 69 N. C. 29, 12 Am. Rep. 641 (1873); State v. Hodges, 55 Md. 127 (1880).

"In order to constitute the crime created by the statute, the stolen property must be received feloniously, or with intent to secrete it from the owner, or in some other way to defraud him of such property. The intent must be criminal or unlawful; otherwise, no crime can be committed. It is the intent with which the property is received that constitutes the essence of the crime. If the intent is honest and meritorious, no crime can be committed." Crippen, P. J., in People v. Johnson, 1 Parker, Cr. R. (N. Y.) 564 (1854). Accord: State ▾ Sweeten, 75 Mo. App. 127 (1898).

PEOPLE v. WILEY.

(Supreme Court of New York, 1842. 3 Hill, 194.)

COWEN, J. The section under which the defendant was indicted. is as follows: "Every person who shall buy or receive in any manner, upon any consideration, any personal property of any value whatsoever, that shall have been feloniously taken away or stolen from any other, knowing the same to have been stolen, shall, upon conviction, be punished," etc., 2 Rev. St. (2d Ed.) p. 567, pt. 4, c. 1, tit. 3, § 71. In charging the jury, the court mentioned the owner of the goods coming to reclaim his stolen property, and his bona fide agents, as not within the purview of the statute. But I take it to be clear, on the other hand, that if, pursuant to an understanding between a stranger and a thief, the stranger invite an interview with the owner, and obtain and actually receive the goods for him, under the mere color of an agency, but really to make a profit out of the larceny, he is a receiver within the statute.

The broad ground was taken on the argument that the offense would not be within the statute of receivers, even though a reward should be taken from the thief himself.

In the case at bar the defendant had come to a knowledge of the larceny soon after its commission, and he appeared to have that sort of communication, and to exercise such a control in respect to the stolen goods, and to negotiate in such a way for their delivery, as to raise a strong belief that he had arranged with the thief to restore the goods as a method of profiting by the crime. He receiving and delivering the goods under such a corrupt arrangement, the pretense of acting as agent for the owner could not operate as a protection. He would be in truth acting for himself. His pretext of agency for the owners would be fraudulent and void, and to allow practices of this kind would be to sanction a mode of evading the statutes.

It seems to me that the charge of the court below when properly understood, so far as it relates to the merits, can hardly be considered as going beyond the distinction between a real and colorable agencybetween the defendant affecting to receive the goods for the owner, but really receiving them for his own benefit. The only part of the charge on the merits which is questioned by the bill of exceptions respects the concluding transactions of Saturday, the 26th of June, when the agreement for the delivery of the goods was consummated. That at this time the defendant knew the goods to have been stolen there is no doubt; nor that he had known the same thing during the previous days of the week. Now, if he had all this time been treating. for such a reward only as was insisted on by the thief before he would give up the goods, or for a fair compensation to himself, proposed and

1 Only extracts from the opinion are printed.