113 



LARCENY. 



LARCH : ECONOMICAL USES. 



shall seem meet ; a second offence is felony, punishable as in cases of 

 simple larceny. 



The same statute makes it felony, punishable as in cases of simple 

 arceny, to steal, or rip, cut or break, with intent to steal, glass or 

 wood- work belonging to any building, or any metal, or utensil or fixture 

 fixed in or to any building, or anything made of metal fixed in land, 

 being private property, or for a fence to any dwelling-house, garden, 

 area, or in any square, street, or other place dedicated to public use' or 

 ornament ; and it is a felony, punishable as in cases of simple larceny, 

 to steal, or sever with intent to steal, the ore of any metal, or any coal, 

 from any mine, bed, or vein thereof. The stealing of any chattel or 

 fixture let to be used with any house or lodging is made a felony, 

 punishable as simple larceny. 



With respect to choses in action, the same statute enacts that if 

 any person shall steal any tally, order, or other security, entitling or 

 evidencing title to any share or interest in any public stock or fund, or 

 in any fund of any body corporate, company or society, or to any. 

 deposit in any savings' bank, or shall steal any debenture, deed, bond, 

 bill, note, warrant, 'order, or other security for money, or shall steal 

 any warrant or order for the delivery or transfer of goods or valuable 

 things, the offence shall be deemed felony of the same nature and in 

 the same degree, and punishable in the same manner as the stealing of 

 any chattel of like value with the share, interest, or deposit to which 

 the security so stolen may relate, or with the money due on the 

 security BO stolen or secured thereby, or with the value of the goods or 

 other valuable thing mentioned in the warrant or order. It also 

 enacts that if any person shall steal, or shall, for any fraudulent 

 purpose, take from its place of deposit or from any person having 

 lawful custody thereof, or shall unlawfully or maliciously obliterate, 

 injure, or destroy any record, writ, return, panel, process, interrogatory, 

 deposition, affidavit, rule, order, or warrant of attorney, or any original 

 document belonging to any court of record, or relating to any matter, 

 civil or criminal, begun, depending, or terminated in any such court, or 

 any bill, answer, interrogatory, deposition, affidavit, order, or decree, 

 or any original document belonging to any court of equity, or relating 

 to any cause or matter in any such court, the offence shall be a mis- 

 demeanor, and subject at the discretion of the court to transportation 

 for seven years, or such other punishment by fine or imprisonment, or 

 by both, as the court shall award. And the stealing, or, for any 

 fraudulent purpose, destroying or concealing a will or other testa- 

 mentary instrument, is a misdemeanor punishable by transportation 

 for seven years, or by fine or imprisonment, or both. 



No larceny can be committed of things which are not the subject of 

 property, as a human corpse, or of things the use of which is common 

 to all mankind, as running water, wild animal* in their natural liberty, 

 4c. It is otherwise of animals which are dead, or are reclaimed or 

 confined, and which are useful to man as food or otherwise. But the 

 stealing of dogs, cats, and ferrets, though tame and valuable, and of 

 bears, monkeys, &c., though reclaimed or confined, does not amount to 

 larceny. The stealing of dogs and of beasta and birds, ordinarily kept 

 in a state of confinement, is made cognisable by justices of the peace. (7 & 

 8 Oeo. IV. c. 29 ; 8 & 9 Vict.,c. 47.) And it is a felony, punishable as in cases 

 of larceny, to course, hunt, snare, or carry away, or kill, or wound deer 

 kept or being in the enclosed part of a forest, chase, or purlieu, or in 

 enclosed land in which deer are usually kept. If in an unenclosed 

 part, the offence is made cognisable by a justice of the peace, with 

 power to impose a pecuniary penalty not exceeding SO/. ; and a second 

 offence, whether of the same description or not, is made felony, 

 punishable as simple larceny. (7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, s. 26.) 



Fourthly, the goods taken should generally be the goods of another 

 MOOD. 



If a man take his own goods supposing them to be the goods of 

 another, no larceny is committed. It is otherwise where the taking ia 

 for the purpose of fraudulently charging another with the loss ; as if a 

 man steal his own goods for the purpose of charging the bailee. If 

 a wife take and convert to her own use the goods of her husband, 

 they being but one person in law, it does not constitute larceny. 



A joint tenant or tenant in common of any personal chattel cannot 

 commit Larceny respecting such chattel as against his co-tenant. But 

 if such chattel be bailed or delivered to the care or keeping of a third 

 party for safe custody, and the effect of the taking be to charge such 

 bailee, it amounts to larceny. 



Stealing oysters or oyster brood from a marked-out or known 

 oyster bed, laying, or fishery, is made larceny by 7 & 8 Oeo. IV. c. 29, 

 s. 36. 



Fifthly, there must be an intent wholly to deprive the owner of the 

 ;i of his property therein, which intent constitutes the 

 fraudulent and felonious character of the act. The most common 

 ; for a theft, and the ordinary mode of depriving the owner of 

 in the thing stolen, arc the conversion of it to the use of 

 :.-ir; and lilackstone and others have considered that such con- 

 n to the use of the thief, or some benefit to be derived to him, is 

 essential to the completion of the offence, agreeably to the definition of 

 in the civil law, " contrcctatio rei fraudulosa lucri faciemli 

 causa." But it appears to be now settled that a wrongful destruction 

 taken, whereby the owner is wholly deprived of his pro- 

 perty therein, ix sufficient to constitute this offence, although no benefit 

 & sought to be derived to the taker. Persons convicted of simple 



ABT AND SCI. DIV. VOr,. V. 



larceny were, by the 7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, made liable, at the discretion 

 of the court, to be transported for seven years', or to be imprisoned 

 with hard labour for a term not exceeding two years, and, if males, to 

 public whipping in addition to imprisonment ; but the punishment of 

 transportation was taken away by the 12 & 13 Viet. c. 11. The court 

 is empowered to sentence the offenders to be kept in solitary con- 

 finement for any period not more than one month at a time, or than 

 three months in the space of one year. (7 Will. IV. 1 Viet. c. 90, s. 5.) 

 Where the party convicted is a person already under sentence for 

 another crime, the court may award the sentence for the subsequent 

 offence, to commence at the expiration of the former sentence. 



Larceny by clerks and servants is punishable by penal servitude, or 

 by imprisonment. (7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, s. 46.) 



The Post-Office Act, 7 Will. IV. and 1 Viet. c. 36, s. 26, makes the 

 stealing and embezzling of post letters, letter-bags, &c., felony, punish- 

 able with a greater or less degree of severity, according to the nature of 

 the offence and the existence or non-existence of a confidential 

 character in the guilty party. [POST-OFFICE.] Stealing in a dwelling- 

 house to the amount of five pounds, or when accompanied by menaces 

 or threats, or when any one is put in bodily fear, is punishable by 

 penal servitude or imprisonment with hard labour. As cattle are 

 necessarily left in fields, and upon commons and wastes, without any 

 person to attend them, the legislature has interfered to protect pro- 

 perty of this description by heavier punishments than those inflicted 

 in other cases of larceny. Cattle-stealers were by several statutes 

 excluded from benefit of clergy ; and upon the abolition of the 

 distinction between capital and clergyable felonies by 7 & 8 Geo. IV. 

 c. 29, stealing any horse, mare, gelding, colt, or filly, or any bull, cow, 

 ox, heifer, or calf, or any ram, ewe, sheep, or lamb, or wilfully killing 

 such cattle with intent to steal the carcase or skin or any part of the 

 cattle so killed, was made a felony punishable with death. But now, 

 under 7 Will. IV. & 1 Viet. c. 90, and subsequent statutes, the 

 punishment of this offence is penal servitude for not more than 

 fifteen years, or imprisonment not exceeding three years. Housebreak- 

 ing is another instance of larceny committed under aggravated circum- 

 stances. [HOUSEBREAKING.] 



A person guilty of larceny may be indicted for the offence at tho 

 suit of the crown [INDICTMENT]; and he might formerly have 'been 

 appealed or accused in a private action brought by the party injured 

 [APPEAL] to punish the offender and obtain restitution. The appeal is 

 now taken away ; but the party injured, and indeed any other person, 

 may prefer a bill of indictment without the leavo or even the know- 

 ledge of the crown or its officers. But the crown may interpose by 

 entering a nolle prosequi before judgment, or by pardoning the offender 

 afterwards ; whereas, in an appeal, the crown could neither stop tho 

 proceedings nor pardon the appellee, whose life after conviction and 

 judgment was wholly at the mercy of the appellant. After conviction 

 the prosecutor may in general maintain an action for the value of the 

 property taken, a right, however, which is seldom exercised, as the 

 offender is seldom possessed of property, and, upon conviction, the 

 property of the felon is forfeited to the crown. 



Simple larcenies, where the value of the property does not exceed 

 five shillings, or where the age of the offender does not exceed sixteen, 

 may now be tried and summarily determined, with the consent of the 

 accused person, by magistrates in petty sessions, the punishment in 

 such cases being limited to six months' imprisonment. (10 & 11 Viet. 

 c. 82; 13 & 14 Viet. c. 37 ; 18 & 19 Viet. c. 126.) Persons cutifcsimy 

 charges of simple larceny, larceny from the person, or as .clerk or 

 servant, may under the last-named statute be similarly punished by 

 the same tribunal. (Blackstone's ' Commentaries,' Mr. Kerr's edition, 

 vol. iv. p. 333.) 



II. Compound larceny is where the crime of larceny ia accompanied 

 by circumstances which the legislature has considered as aggravating 

 the offence and requiring an increase of punishment. 



Stealing from the person of another, whether openly or clandestinely, 

 is a felony now punishable by penal servitude or imprisonment. To 

 constitute this offence, the thing stolen must be completely removed 

 from the person of the owner, though such complete removal is not 

 necessary in casea of simple larceny. It is no answer to the charge, 

 that such force or fear was used as would make the offence amount to 

 robbery. [ROBBERY.] 



LARCH : ECONOMICAL USES. The larch and its products are 

 applied to a large number of uses in the arts. The timber is for mauy 

 purposes more valuable than that of its sister-tree the fir. For 

 instance it is more free from knots ; it is more durable, as the knots 

 which it contains are seldom rotten ; it is less liable to shrink ; it will 

 not crack with any moderate degree of heat, when in the form of 

 boards or narrow pieces ; it is much more tough ; and it is susceptible 

 of receiving a much higher polish, developing a grain or texture often 

 singularly beautiful. On all these accounts larch timber has been 

 much sought after in recent years. Railway and canal engineers espe- 

 cially value it, on account of the long period during which it will bear 

 alternations of wet and dry without decay. It has been experimentally 

 determined that when oak and Larch posts of equal size arc driven into 

 the beds or banks of rivers, the larch rot much less speedily than 

 the oak. On one occasion a plank-bridge was examined after fifteen 

 years, when it was found that the only planks which had not decayed 

 were those made of larch. It has bee-' found a very valuable sub- 



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