Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/730

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

718 FBPEIBitli HEPOBTBB. �to make it a orime tu conspira to commit a crime, although tbq.conspiraey be not fully consummated. In regard to the change of phraseology, it seems to me mnimportant, and that the two phrases are synonymous. The revisers had no power to alter the law, while theymight change the mere forms of expression ; and unless something were shown that would demonstrate that congress, in enaeting the Eevision, intended to alter the law by amending the phraseology, the proper rule of construction is to treat the language of the Eevision as synonymous to that of the original act, where the words are so much alike as they are here. �The case oi U. S. v. Fehrenbach, 2 Woods, 175, ia not opposed to this construction. , Under the rule prescribed in section 5600 of the Revised Satutes.it relegates section 5440 to its original place in the revenue act of 1867, and applies to a conspiracy to commit an offence against the revenue laws the same term of limitations that section 1046 of the Revised 8ta tutes provides for all "crimes arising under the revenue laws." In other words, the case decides that a conspiracy to defraud the revenue is a crime arising under the revenue laws, in the purview of section 1046. But this does not involve a limitation of the scope of section 5440, either to conspiracies to commit f rauds on the revenue, or to conspir- aoies injuring the United States as a govemment. A con- spiracy to defraud the revenue would probably be held to be "a crime arising under the revenue laws," within the meaning of section 1046, whether found denounced in a revenue law, or elsewhere in the criminal code, moreespe- cially if the conspira&y charged were one to commit an act itself made a erime^ It is not the place whore found in the statutes that impresses the crim© with the characteristic of "arising under the revenue laws,, " but the fact that it is an oiience against the revenue, andis so deelared to be either expressly, or by necessary implicatipn. \ I am of opinion, therefore, thai we cannot, on the principi^ of that case, be required to restrict section 5440 to such "oiiences" as oper- ate to injure the government itself, but that it coyers every ��� �