commit two indictable acts, the question which was the principal and which the subordinate intent was immaterial, as a conviction was proper on an indictment for either. The same views are expressed in Hunt's Case, 1 Moo. C. C. 93; Cox's Case, Russ. & Ry. 362; Regina v. Bowen, 1 Car. & M. 149; Regina v. Button, 11 Ad. & El., N. S., 929.

The rule adopted in the latter cases commends itself to our judgment more readily because of the consequences which would flow from its rejection. A large class of statutory offenses consists of acts done with the ultimate intent to do some mischief which may or may not be accomplished. The means used are frequently criminal and punishable. Where the ultimate intent is accomplished, that act may be detected and punished. But where it remains incomplete, and the intention rests with the guilty person, it would lead to a great perversion of justice to permit him to show, in defense of an indictment for using the unlawful means, that he had such an ultimate design of perhaps greater atrocity, the evidence of which would not be likely to be proclaimed publicly. Justice certainly requires no such principle to be adopted, and we find no sanction for it in the established rules of law.

We are therefore of the opinion that if the defendant was guilty of the act charged in the indictment, it can make no difference in his favor that he committed it to enable him to seduce the prosecutrix. The second request made to the court was therefore properly refused.

C It is insisted on behalf of the prisoner that although the administration of the poison was followed by severe bodily injury, yet no conviction can be had under the statute without affirmative proof of the intent; and that if the prisoner designed to produce one effect, and was not aware that a further and severer injury would ensue, he is not responsible for that injury. No question arises here upon the attempt to excite the passions of the complainant, but it is assumed that is no legal injury. That question we shall consider in its place hereafter.

The request made to the court to charge on this subject we think was properly refused. The defendant may not have known that the effect would be produced which actually occurred; but it does not follow that he might not have known it, or that he should be excused for using the poison without knowing it. But it does not appear from the bill of exceptions that any evidence was offered to show this want of knowledge. Where an unlawful act is done, the law presumes it was don

with an unlawful intent, and here the act of administering the poison was unquestionably unlawful. So long as the poison remained in the hands of the prisoner, its mingling being am indifferent matter, no presumption arose against him; but the unlawful act of administering it raised the legal inference that he did it with the intention of producing such effect as would naturally result from its reception. It is unnecessary to decide how far even positive proof that a man was misinformed as to the degree of injury likely to arise from the use of any substance would avail him in defense where he used it designedly for any unlawful purpose. But there can be no doubt that if the direct tendency of any man's willful act is to produce injury, and that injury is in fact produced, the intention is, in law, deducible from the act itself; and something more than mere ignorance must be shown to relieve him from liability for all the consequences attending an act which he knows to be unlawful: 3 Greenl. Ev., secs. 13, 14; Commonwealth v. York, 9 Met. 103 [43 Am. Dec. 373].

The question that next arises is, What is the injury contemplated by the statute? Its language is as follows: "If any person shall mingle any poison with any food, drink, or medicines, with intent to kill or injure any other person, or shall willfully poison any spring, well, or reservoir of water with such intent, he shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life, or any term of years."

Our attention has not been called to any legal construction given to this language, and we are therefore called upon to give it such an interpretation as seems to us in accordance with its words and design.

Most, if not all, poisons are deadly, if given in considerable doses; and the common understanding of the term "poison" is, that it distinguishes substances which are thus fatal from other minerals and drugs. But while fatal in one quantity, a smaller amount often produces injurious effects, varying in degree with the proportion given. The statute, recognizing this, was made to punish not only the intent to produce death by poison, but also to produce injuries not fatal. And the wide range

of punishment, from imprisonment for life to a brief period in the state prison, shows that it was not designed to make any rigid rule as to the degrees of injury, but to leave the whole matter open to a reasonable construction.

The injury referred to must, we think, be such as would be directly, and not secondarily, produced by the poison itself; and

this being so, the circumstances attending it are important, as in other cases, to throw light on the intent, and also to graduate the punishment.

In looking into the subject under consideration, we are bound to take notice of such matters as belong to the common stock of ordinary human knowledge and experience, and cannot shut our eyes to the current of events about us. There is no need of entering into any scientific discussion upon poisons, but there are facts relative to their use which are familiar to every man of common intelligence.

Poisons are very often administered to produce death; and it is this class of poisoning which is most often brought to the notice of courts. But it is safe to say that poison is given in smaller quantities much oftener than in deadly doses. In this, of course, we leave out of view its innocent use by physicians and other authorized persons. But it is not every administration of poison with a mere absence of actual guilty intent that will be excused. It has been held that if a slave, without authority, and with a design to produce harmless sleep, administers laudanum to an infant, and contrary to her expectations it causes death, she is guilty of manslaughter: Ann v. State, 11 Humph. 159. And a person assuming to act as a physician, who obstinately or rashly administers a remedy which he knows, or has reason to believe, is a dangerous one, is liable, however little he may have intended to harm the patient: Rice v. State, 8 Mo. 561; Rex v. Long, 4 Car. & P. 398; Rex v. Long, Id. 423: Rex v. Spiller, 5 Id. 333. And our statutes make it a punishable offense for a physician or any one else to prescribe any poisonous drug or medicine while intoxicated: R. S. 685, sec. 4. It is obvious that the law does not encourage tampering with such matters, even by physicians and nurses.

The instances of the administration of small quantities of poison, which become known from time to time, are rarely found to have been intended to produce mere physical pain or disability. Occasional instances are reported in the books of the continued administering of minute doses to prolong disease and agony; but experience has shown the most common abuse of poison to consist in its application as an auxiliary to the commission of other crimes. And it is wonderfully adapted to this nefarious purpose. Easily disguised in most kinds of food, capable of producing effects through small quantities, subtle and overpowering in its operation, it may be administered with ease and crecy, and accomplish every villainous purpose, from inducing

sleep and stupor, to insanity, paralysis, and death; and there are no agencies more difficult of detection. Its abuse in modern times has become alarmingly frequent. The greater susceptibility of some persons over others to be affected by it renders it still more dangerous. Attempts are often made to murder with it, which fail merely from the miscalculation of the criminal; so that the actual intent is not made to appear by the act itself as heinous as it is in reality. It is the great auxiliary of the worst and most violent

offenders.

And the records of our criminal courts have of late years shown it to be one of the chief means resorted to for the destruction of female virtue. Hundreds of innocent young women are deceived into entering the dens of iniquity which abound in our cities, under the pretext of honest employment, and awake from their drugged sleep dishonored and ruined. These things were all known when the statute was passed, and known, too, as the very common effects of these baneful drugs; and they cannot be overlooked in any attempt to construe it. These effects are not all directly produced by the use of poison, but without it they would not be brought about in such cases; and therefore it becomes necessary to see what part poisons have in producing the combined result. The part which they perform is very impor tant. Their operation is to disable the injured persons, and take away the power of resistance. And the injury in each case depends entirely, or nearly so, upon the extent of the danger which presses upon the victim, and the corresponding need of strength to resist it. If the intent be merely to produce sleep or any other temporary and painless effect, and nothing more, the injury might be very slight, and perhaps too trifling to be worthy of legal consideration; but if stupor or any other unsound condition is produced to facilitate personal violence, it becomes a very serious matter. The circumstances attending every forcible assault give it character; and the intent is, according to the claim made by the defendant himself, of the very essence of the injury. To leave a child in the open air in summer may be pleasant and useful; to do so in winter may be murder.

Wherever, therefore, there is a positive physical effect produced, and the poison administered operates to derange the healthy organization of the system temporarily or permanently, we think there is an injury which, whenever it is reasonably appreciable, may be regarded as within the statute. The circumstances of each case will of course throw light on the crimi.

nality of intent, and govern the courts in trial and punishment. The law takes no heed of insignificant trifles, but, above and beyond those, it extends its protection and its penalties.

If other statutes covered analagous offenses, we might hesitate longer upon the proper construction of this law; but as many cases which could have hardly escaped notice are not to be reached unless through this statute, we are not disposed to resort to metaphysical subtilities to defeat a law, which, if severe, is to the public benignant and humane in its severity.

The intent of the defendant is, in all the requests to the court, admitted to have been to excite the sensual desires of the prosecutrix, in order to make her an easier prey to his lust. This was to be effected by poison, which should so work upon her physi cal system as to excite her passions beyond the control of reason, and in effect to produce, if not insanity, the most deplorable effect of insanity, which is the dethronement of reason from its governing power. It seems to us that to hold such an effect to be no injury would be a mockery of justice.

We are of opinion that the defendant's exceptions are not well taken, and that a new trial should not be granted.

The other justices concurred.

OFFENSE OF ADMINISTERING POISON. See Sarah v. State, 61 Am. Dec. 5444 Ben v. State, 58 Id. 234.

THE PRINCIPAL CASE IS CITED in Rose v. State, 33 Ind. 169, to the point that the intention to commit, or the commission of, an injury as a means to the accomplishment of another ultimate unlawful object is not, by reason of the existence of such ultimate design, taken out of the operation of the stat ate prohibiting such injury.

CLARK v. CRANE.

[5 MICHIGAN, 151.]

ASSESSOR'S CERTIFICATE TO TOWNSHIP ASSESSMENT ROLL IS FATALLY DEFECTIVE when it states that the assessors have estimated the real estate at a sum which, for the purpose of assessing, they believed to be the true value thereof, instead of what they believed to be the true cash value thereof, as required by law; and a sale for taxes levied on the basis of such assessment roll conveys no title to the purchaser.

WHAT LAW REQUIRES TO BE DONE FOR PROTECTION OF TAX-PAYER in the assessment and collection of taxes is mandatory, and cannot be regarded as merely directory.

EJECTMENT. On the trial, the plaintiff having shown a prima facie title in himself, the defendant introduced a deed from the