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maging in its effects upon men or bodies of men than all others, it is evasion and subterfuge in order to escape deserved and inevitable responsibility. It shows, at the same time, conscious guilt, weakness, and cowardice. It is indeed one of the not uncommon shifts to which popular assemblies, in times of popular excitement, are driven by their weakness and want of courage. For a considerably numerous body of men will be more willing to do or to say an untruth than a single man or a small number of men, inasmuch as the guilt and discredit are so much divided that no one in fact feels much responsibility. Hence, in the administration of justice, the number four in the members of the court has been considered as combining more advantages, and as escaping more objections, than any other number, provided the work could be accomplished by that

number.

We need not, therefore, be surprised that the statute in question was passed with a full conviction and virtual admission upon its face that it did, unless its provisions could be construed to mean something else besides what their words expressed, conflict in express terms with the provisions of the constitution. We have known many legislative acts passed when it was openly avowed by the members who voted for them that they were unconstitutional, "but then," said they, "let the courts take the responsibility!" And we are glad to find that the courts have not yet manifested any disposition to shrink from this responsibility. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in Chase vs. Miller, 11 Am. L. Reg. 146, made a similar decision to the one just preceding this note. The words of Mr. Justice WOODWARD, in that case, are very pertinent to this general question of bending laws and constitutions to suit the emergencies and exigencies of the

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times. "A good deal has been said about the hardship of depriving so meritorious a class of voters as our volunteer soldiers of the right of voting. As a court of justice we cannot feel the force of any such consideration. Our business is to expound the constitution and laws of the country as we find them written. We have no bounties to grant to soldiers, or anybody else." "While such men fight for the constitution, they do not expect judges to sap and mine it by judicial construction."

He must have been a careless student of the history of the advance and the decline of free states, who has not yet learned that they depend more for their permanency and perpetuity upon their courts than upon their armies; more upon the enforcement of the law and its purity of administration, than upon all other interests and estates combined. It is, in our humble judgment, more attributable to the unflinching firmness and purity of judicial administration in the English courts; to that strict and undeviating adherence, in those tribunals, to the letter and the spirit of the written and unwritten law of the land, than to all other influences combined, that the British constitution and the English nation has outlived its feudalism, its despotism, and its barbarism of a thousand years, and now promises a thousand years more of constitutional freedom.

It will be an evil day for our nation when the bench and the bar come to think lightly of the trusts committed to their charge, or to shape their conduct more by the popular demands than by a careful adherence to the letter and spirit of the law. It is not uncommon to near pretentious and inexperienced men complain of too rigid adherence in the courts to the letter of the law or the constitution. They quote, with great

apparent triumph, "The letter killeth," &c., without seeming to comprehend that the spirit without the letter is as truly dead as the letter without the spirit. In this life, surely, we must be content to live in the body and to go by the letter, remembering always that the soul and the spirit have no modes of action or expression except through the body and the letter. Every careful student of the common law, as administered in England and America, has had fre

quent occasion to observe the far more strict adherence to rules in the English courts than here, and to note, in consequence, the far greater certainty and stability of judicial administration there. Written constitutions exist only in the letter, and if that is disregarded or perverted, the thing for which our fathers expended so much is gone with it. There is a spirit, but it dwells only in the letter. I. F. R.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA ex rel. JAMES BUCHANAN CROSSE vs. JOHN S. HALLOWAY, WARDEN OF THE EASTERN PENITENTIARY.

A pardon is an act of mere grace, and is not founded on any preliminary steps that furnish legal merits or a legal title.

The intention of the Executive to grant a pardon can have no legal force until carried into completed act. The completed act is the charter of pardon delivered. By usage the delivery of a pardon to the warden of a prison is primâ facie equivalent to delivery, or is a constructive delivery to the prisoner, but it is open to be proved no delivery by showing circumstances that are inconsistent with the intention to deliver it.

A pardon procured by false and forged representations and papers is void. Therefore, in a case where on the faith of a forged letter from the War Department, asking for a pardon, and stating that the prisoner was wanted for secret public service, a pardon was executed by the Governor and put into the hands of the United States Marshal, to be delivered to the prisoner on his performance of the service, and by the marshal delivered to the warden of the prison in order to obtain the release of the prisoner, Held, that this was not a delivery to the prisoner, notwithstanding the custom in Pennsylvania to deliver pardons to the warden of the prison to keep as his voucher.

Even had this been a delivery, the fraud in obtaining the pardon would have avoided it, although it was not shown that the prisoner had any hand in perpe trating the fraud.

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Whether the statute 27 Edw. 3, c. 2, is in force in Pennsylvania, quære?

Habeas Corpus. The relator James Buchanan Crosse was convicted of forgery at the June Term 1860 of the Court of Quarter

Sessions of the county of Philadelphia, and sentenced to an imprisonment of five years in solitary confinement at labor in the State Penitentiary.

On the 12th December 1862, he presented a petition to the Hon. George W. WOODWARD, one of the justices of the Supreme. Court, at chambers, for a writ of habeas corpus, which was allowed and made returnable before the Court in banc. The petition set forth the conviction as above recited and the commitment thereon, and also that on June 3d, 1862, his Excellency Andrew G. Curtin, Governor of the Commonwealth, had granted to the petitioner, under the great seal of the State, a full, free, and unconditional pardon for the said offence, and that the same was shown and delivered to the respondent the warden of the said penitentiary; further, that by reason of the said pardon the petitioner was released from confinement in the said penitentiary by the said Halloway, but was immediately thereafter taken by force and compulsion to the city of Washington, and that on June 5th, 1862, he was brought back to the city of Philadelphia, and by force and compulsion was redelivered into the custody of the said Halloway, by whom he was and still is illegally detained, &c.

On January 10th 1863, before the Court in banc, the respondent made return setting forth the commitment as above recited, and proceeding as follows:

"Respondent further says that true it is, that the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on the 3d day of June, A. D. 1862, made out a pardon for the said J. Buchanan Crosse, which pardon was never delivered to said Crosse, but was placed in the hands of respondent on the 4th day of June, A. D. 1862, by William Millward, Esq., United States Marshal for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Respondent thereupon allowed said Crosse to be taken away by and in the custody of said William Millward, Esq.

"That said Millward, on the 5th day of June, A. D. 1862, returned the said Crosse to the custody of the respondent.

"That said Crosse remained in the custody of Marshal Millward until returned to the custody of respondent."

The return further set forth that the said pardon had been procured by certain forged letters from the Assistant Secretary of War, copies of which were annexed, that the said pardon was therefore void, and that the said Crosse was detained upon the original commitment.

Immediately upon the reading of this return, Edward H. Weil, Esq., on behalf of the relator, filed a traverse to that part of it which asserted that the pardon had not been delivered, and on the issue thus formed several witnesses were examined at the bar of the Court.

Eli Slifer, Esq., Secretary of the Commonwealth, was first called, and testified that some time early in June the Governor received a letter purporting to be from the Assistant Secretary of War, asking for the pardon of Crosse.

The next day United States Marshal Millward called and presented a recommendation for the pardon, signed by Collector Thomas and United States District Attorney Coffey, and stating that he was needed by the Government for some special service. On this letter the pardon was granted. The great seal of the State was attached. It was distinctly understood between the Marshal and the Secretary, however, that the pardon was not to be handed to Crosse until he had performed the service required of him by the Government.

The pardon was never enrolled, was never treated as a completed instrument. It was granted entirely on the letter to Governor Curtin from the Secretary of War. It is usual to insert in pardons the causes or suggestions for which they are granted, but it was omitted in this case, because the letter from the Assistant Secretary of War desired that no publicity should be given to them.

The Secretary was first informed of the forgery the day after the pardon was issued, by a despatch from Marshal Millward, saying that it was based on forged papers. The Secretary immediately telegraphed to the Marshal to return the prisoner to the penitentiary and return the pardon to him (the Secretary). It was distinctly understood that Crosse was not to know of the pardon, and it was not to be delivered to him until he had completed the service required of him by the Government.

Mr. Weil next offered in evidence a certified copy of the warden's Journal of the Penitentiary, in the warden's handwriting.

The object of the offer was to show that the pardon had been regularly entered on the journal, and that the prisoner had consequently been discharged from custody.

The offer was objected to by Mr. Mann and Mr. Meredith, on the ground that a memorandum, made by the warden, was not evidence in the case.

Chief Justice LOWRIE, after some little argument of counsel, said that the paper could be used when Mr. Halloway came in. William Millward, Esq., United States Marshal, was called and testified that in June 1862, he received a letter as follows, purporting to come from the Assistant Secretary of War :

"War Department, Washington City, June 1, 1862. "William Millward, Esq., United States Marshal, Philadelphia, Pa.: "Sir-The Secretary of War directs me to advise you of the receipt of a dispatch from the headquarters of the army to this department, with an urgent request that an immediate effort be made to send to that point the somewhat notorious forger, J. Buchanan Crosse, now an inmate of your State Prison, and to instruct you te proceed to Harrisburg, for the purpose of making a personal application to the Executive for his release, and to bring him to this city with the least possible delay.

"You will please communicate the contents of this note to United States District Attorney Coffey, Collector Thomas, and Postmaster Walborn, and request them to append their names with your own to the petition enclosed, which, with a copy of record of sentence, it is presumed will be sufficient, as this department has addressed a note to Governor Curtin, requesting his favorable consideration of the

same.

"Crosse is to be sent over the lines for a specific purpose with a telegraph operator now in waiting at headquarters; and as the service will be attended with much personal peril, the Secretary of War is desirous that no publicity be given to the fact that the application for his release emanated from this Department, the knowledge of which, in case of accident, would be fatal to him, and defeat the purposes of his mission. You will therefore observe at a glance the propriety of avoiding any explanations whatever to the local authorities and prison officials, or even to Crosse himself, until he reaches this point.

"Your prompt attention will be duly recognised by this Department. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

P. H. WATSON, Assistant Secretary of War."

That this letter was franked as he supposed by the Assistant

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