s. 58, with corruptly and feloniously receiving from B. money under pretence of helping B. to recover goods before then stolen from B., and with not causing the thieves to be apprehended, three questions were left for the jury: 1. Did A. mean to screen the guilty parties, or to share the money with them? 2. Did A. know the thieves, and intend to assist them in getting rid of the property by promising B. to buy it? 3. Did A. know the thieves, and assist B., as her agent, and at her request, in endeavoring to purchase the stolen property from them, not meaning to bring the thieves to justice? The jury answered the first two questions in the negative, and the third in the affirmative. It was held that the receipt of the money under the above circumstances was a corrupt receiving of the money by A. within the statute. R. v. Pascoe, 1 Den. C. C. R. 456; 18 L. J., M. C.

186.

*By s. 102, any person advertising a reward for the return of property stolen or lost, and using any words purporting [*421 that no questions will be asked, or that a reward will be given for property stolen or lost without seizing or making any inquiry after the person producing such property, or promising to return to any pawnbroker or other person who may have bought or advanced money upon any property stolen or lost, the money so paid or advanced, or any other sum of money or reward for the return of such property, or any person printing or publishing such advertisement. shall forfeit fifty pounds, to be recovered by action of debt.

*422]

*CONCEALMENT OF DEEDS AND INCUMBRANCES.

By the 22 & 23 Vict. c. 35, s. 24, " any seller or mortgagor of land or of any chattels, real or personal, or choses in action conveyed or assigned to a purchaser, or the solicitor or agent of any such seller or mortgagor who shall, after the passing of this act, conceal any settlement, deed, will, or other instrument material to the title, or any incumbrance, from the purchaser, or falsify any pedigree upon which the title does or may depend, in order to induce him to accept the title offered or produced to him, with intent in any of such cases, to defraud, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, being found guilty, shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to suffer such punishment by fine or imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labor, or both, as the court shall award."

And by the 23 & 24 Vict. c. 38, s. 8, the above section is to be read as if the words "or mortgagee" had followed the word "purchaser " in every place where that word is introduced in the section.

By the Land Titles and Transfer of Land in England Act, 38 & 39 Vict. c. 87, s. 99, if in the course of any proceedings before the registrar or the court in pursuance of this act, any person concerned in such proceedings as principal or agent, with intent to conceal the title or claim of any person, or to substantiate a false claim, suppresses, attempts to suppress, or is privy to the suppression of any document or of any fact, the person so suppressing, attempting to suppress, or privy to suppression, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction on indictment shall be liable to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labor, or to be fined such sum, not exceeding five hundred pounds, as the court before which he is tried may award.

-Proof of the existence of conspiracy in general

Proof of the existence of conspiracy-declarations of other conspira

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Conspiracy to murder persons, whether her Majesty's subjects or not 436

Preferring indictments for conspiracy. By the 22 & 23 Vict. c. 17, s. 1, no bill of indictment for conspiracy is to be presented to or found by any grand jury, except under the circumstances there mentioned. See ante, p. 192. See this statute in the Appendix. And see also 30 & 31 Vict. c. 35, s. 1, in Appendix.

age

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Nature of the crime of conspiracy. The earliest mention of the crime of conspiracy is to be found in the statute 33 Edw. I., entitled "Ordinatio de Conspiratoribus." It defines the offence thus: "Conspirators be they that do confeder and bind themselves by oath, covenant, or other alliance, that every of them shall aid and bear the other falsely and maliciously to indite or cause to indite or falsely to move or maintain pleas; and also such as cause children within appeal men of felony, whereby they are imprisoned and sore grieved; and such as retain men in the country with liveries or fees for to maintain their malicious enterprises, and this extendeth as well to the takers as to the givers; and stewards and bailiffs of great lords which by their seignory office or power undertake to bear or maintain quarrels, pleas or debates that concern other parties than such as touch the estates of their lords or themselves." This is called in the statute a "final definition of conspirators." In process of time the word came to have a wider interpretation (see, for the history of the change, Wright's "Law of Criminal Conspiracies and Agreements," 1—18). In modern books numerous definitions of conspiracy occur: see R. v. Vincent, 9 C. & P. 91, 38 E. C. L.; R. v. Seward, 1 A. & E. 706, 28 E. C. L.; R. v. Peck, 9 A. & E. 686, 36 E. C. L.; R. v. Jones, 4 B. & Ad. 345, 24 E. C. L; 3 Russ. Cri. 109, 5th ed.; R. v. Parnell, 14 Cox, C. C. 508; they all, in effect, amount to this, that a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to do that which is unlawful.' "It consists not merely in the

11 Wheel. C. C. 149, 222; Commonwealth v. Hunt, 4 Metc. 111; People v. Mather, 4 Wend. 229. All who accede to a conspiracy after its formation are equally guilty with the original conspirators. Id. It may be between principal and clerk. Case

intention of two or more, but in the agreement of two or more to do an unlawful act, or to do a lawful act by unlawful means." *Mulcahy v. Reg., L. R., 3 H. L. 317. It must be by two *424] at least, for if two be tried together the jury cannot be satisfied of the guilt of either if they are not satisfied of the guilt of both, R. v. Manning, 12 Q. B. D. 241; and husband and wife cannot be guilty of the offence of conspiracy because they are one person at law. Hawk. c. 72, s. 8. Of course it makes no difference whether the final object be unlawful, or the means be unlawful: in either case the conspiracy is equally indictable.

of Robbins et al., 4 Rog. Rec. 1; Commonwealth v. Judd, 2 Mass. 329; Commonwealth v. Davis, 9 Id. 415; State v. Ritchie, 4 Halst. 223; State v. Buchanan, 5 H & J. 317; State v. Cawood, 2 Stew. 360; Collins v. Commonwealth, 3 S. & R. 220; Commonwealth v. McKisson, 8 Id. 420. A conspiracy to commit a felony, if the felony be actually committed, is merged. Commonwealth v. Kingsbury et al., 5 Mass. 106. Aliter, in a misdemeanor. People v. Mather, supra; Commonwealth v. Delaney, 1 Gr. Cases, 224. See Commonwealth v. O'Brien, 12 Cush. 84. The offence of conspiracy to impede an officer in the discharge of his official duty will not merge in the offence of impeding the officer. State v. Noyes, 25 Vt. 415. The offence of conspiring is of common law origin, and not restricted or abridged by the statute, 33 Edw. 1. An indictment will lie at common law for a conspiracy: 1. To do an act not illegal or punishable if done by an individual, but immoral only. 2. To do an act neither illegal nor immoral in an individual, but to effect a purpose which has a tendency to prejudice the public. 3. To extort money from another or to injure his reputation, by means not indictable, as verbal defamation, and whether it be to charge him with an indictable offence or not. 4. To cheat a person, accomplished by means of an act which would not in law amount to an indictable cheat in an individual. 5. To impoverish or ruin a third person in his trade or profession. 6. To defraud a third person by means of an act not per se unlawful, and though no person be thereby injured. 7. To defraud, though the means be not determined on at the time. State v. Buchanan et al., 5 H. & J. 317. A conspiracy may be criminal, although for the purpose only of getting possession of land, by means of an extorted deed, in favor of the legal owner. State v. Shooter, 8 Rich. 72. A conspiracy to commit an assault and battery is an indictable offence. Commonwealth v. Putnam, 29 Pa. St. 296. See generally, United States v. Cole, 5 McL. 513; Hazon v. Commonwealth, 23 Pa. St. 366; Alderman v. People, 4 Mich. 414; Smith v. People, 25 Ill. 17; People v. Clark, 10 Mich. 310; State v. Potter, 28 Ia. 554; Commonwealth v. Wallace, 82 Mass. 221; Lowery v. State, 30 Tex. 402. A charge of a conspiracy "to cheat and defraud” one of his goods is insufficient, as not necessarily importing a criminal offence. The means by which this purpose was to be effected must be set forth so that it may be seen that it was a conspiracy to effect the object by illegal means. State v. Read, 40 Vt. 113. The gist of conspiracy is the unlawful confederation; and it is not necessary to prove an overt act in pursuance of it. State v. Pulte, 12 Minn. 164. [Bloomer v. State, 48 Md. 521.] A conspiracy by workmen to quit their employer in a body, unless certain other workmen are dismissed, is indictable. State v. Donaldson, 3 Vr. 151. Every association is criminal whose object is to raise or depress the price of labor, beyond what it would bring were it left without artificial excitement. Commonwealth v. Carlisle, 1 Journal Jurisp. 225. See The Trials of the Journeymen Cordwainers, Philadelphia, 1806; New York, 1810; Pittsburgh, 1816; Pamphlets. A conspiracy to commit felony is a misdemeanor which becomes merged in the higher crime when consummated. Commonwealth v. Blackburn, 1 Duv. 4. Where two persons combine to steal from the persons of a crowd and one of them attempts to steal while the other abets him, both are guilty of the attempt; and the attempt is not merged in the conspiracy. State v. Wilson, 30 Conn. 500. S.

It is no bar to an action for conspiring fraudulently to induce the plaintiff to come into the State with intent to cause his arrest, that he submitted to the jurisdiction without pleading the illegality of his arrest in abatement. Cook v. Brown, 125 Mass. 30, 31. In a conspiracy each is liable for any act which results from an attempt to further the design. The Anarchists' Case, 12 N. E. Rep. 865; s. c. 6 Am. Crim. Rep. 570.

Notwithstanding the high authority on which this definition is founded it is unsatisfactory, inasmuch as the word "unlawful," upon which it turns, is ambiguous, and appears to be used in the definition in a sense in which it is used nowhere else. It does not mean 66 criminal," for there are many cases in which a combination to do a thing is a crime, although the act itself, if done by an individual, would not be a crime; for instance, it is a crime to conspire to seduce a woman, though seduction itself is not a crime. On the other hand, "unlawful" does not mean 66 tortious," "for there are torts which it is not a crime to conspire to commit, as, for instance, an ordinary trespass. Nor, again, does any case go so far as to decide that a combination to commit a breach of contract is a conspiracy. Hence, the word "unlawful," in the definition of conspiracy, has no precise meaning, and the definition is in reality no definition at all. On comparing the cases referred to below, the following propositions may be deduced from them, which perhaps approach as nearly to a definition as the vagueness of the law will permit.

1. A combination to commit any crime is an indictable conspiracy. A strong case of this is afforded by the case of R. v. Bunn and others, 12 Cox, C. C. 316, in which several persons were convicted of a conspiracy for agreeing together to commit an offence by breaking a contract of service without notice, and were sentenced upon conviction to a heavier penalty than would have been inflicted upon any of them individually. As to this see now the recent statute, 38 & 39 Vict. c. 86, ss. 3, 4, 5, post, p. 442.

acy in

2. A combination to commit a civil injury is an indictable conspirmany, though it is impossible to say precisely in what, cases. 3. Combinations to do acts which the courts regarded as outrages on morality and decency, or as dangerous to the public peace, or injurious to the public interest, have in many cases been held to be conspiracies.

The vagueness of the second and third of these propositions leaves so broad a discretion in the hands of the judges that it is hardly too much to say that plausible reasons may be found for declaring it to be a crime to combine to do almost anything which the judges regard as morally wrong or politically or socially dangerous. The power which the vagueness of the law of conspiracy puts into the hands of the judges is something like the power which the vagueness of the law of libel puts into the hands of juries. The case of the law of conspiracy as it affects workmen, who combine to raise their wages (see p. 438), is a remarkable illustration of this.

With regard to civil injuries, it may be observed that wherever a combination to commit such an injury has been held to be criminal the injury has been malicious, that is to say, the parties have not been under a bona fide mistake as to a matter of fact, which, if true, would have justified their conduct. Thus, a combination to walk *over a field, or to pull down fences, would not be a conspiracy, [*425 if the object was to try a question as to a right of way, though

it certainly would be a combination to commit an act unlawful in the