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The trials through which the country has passed, the sifting of the wheat from the chaff, of good from the bad officials - which it is hoped is going on and to which the people of the United States are addressing themselves — will renovate the several departments of government; and surely the exigency will produce the men demanded:

Young Cudahy was then forced into the buggy, blindfolded, and driven rapidly into the southwestern part of the city of Omaha, where he was imprisoned in a vacant house previously prepared for his reception and detention. Here he was kept a closelyconfined prisoner until a ransom was paid for his release and safe return.

The disappearance of young Cudahy was soon dis

hands;

Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy.

Then, will America stand upon the threshold of a new age, and her name be an inspiring incentive to justice and freedom the world over; and then will she take an onward stride toward the goal of neverending peace, unity and national grandeur, or as Our Own Oliver Wendell Holmes rythmically puts it:

"Long as the watch towers of our crownless queen
Front the broad oceans that she sits between,
May her proud sons their plighted faith maintain,
And guard unbroken union's lengthening chain
Union, our peaceful sovereign, she alone
Can make or keep the western world our own."

Her free institutions being canonized in the hearts of the people, no political upheaval can wrest them from her grasp. As we are prone to remember with peculiar pride the trials through which we have passed, the victories won, the strides of progress in civil and religious liberty, and in all of the elements of national security, we naturally work for the conservation and glory of the system.

America enters upon the second century of her existence with high and abiding hopes honored at home and respected abroad, as the grand and successful pioneer in the ennobling principles of representative government, while her people, with one accord utter the hopeful prayer, Esto Perpetua. JOHN FREEMAN BAKER.

No. 156 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY.

THE CUDAHY ABDUCTION.

BY JAMES M. KERR.

The incidents in the Cudahy abduction are still fresh in the mind of the people, not only of the community where the crime was committed, but of the nation at large. It will be remembered that on the evening of December the eighteenth, at Omaha, Nebraska, Eddy Cudahy, a lad of fifteen summers, while passing along the street within a block of his home, was accosted by a couple of strangers who drove up in a buggy, one of whom represented himself to be the sheriff of Sharpy county, declared that the young man was Eddy McGee, who was wanted in their county for stealing $600 from his aunt, and

anything definite was known regarding the real cause of his disappearance. On the morning following the abduction an unknown horseman cantered up to the front gate of the Cudahy mansion, flung a letter on to the greensward and rode rapidly away. The letter, when opened, was found to contain an offer to return the missing boy for a ransom. Finally, by similar letters, delivered in the same manner, the amount of the ransom was fixed, and the method of payment pointed out. The elder Cudahy was directed to drive at a specified time of day, in a manner described, carrying a designated signal a lantern attached to his dash-board — with no one accompanying or following him, to a certain lonely spot, particularly designated, also marked by a designated lantern, and there deposit $25,000 in gold currency in a sack, and the boy would be safely returned the next morning. The gold was taken as directed and deposited at the place designated. On the following morning the boy was mysteriously returned to his parents.

The search for the parties who committed the outrage and divided the ransom was then commenced, with the object of bringing them to the bar of justice. Recently one, James Callahan, was arrested on suspicion of being one of the parties implicated in the crime, - "No. 3," who acted as "jailer," — and is now being held for trial, charged with various

felonies and misdemeanors.

On the facts above presented the questions arising in the public mind are, is Callahan one of the guilty parties, and if so what are his crimes and what is likely to be his punishment?

Whether Callahan is one of the parties implicated in the abduction and shared in the ransom money, remains to be yet proven, although the police claim to have abundant evidence to establish all the charges against him. But policemen are neither lawyers nor judges, and their presumptions as to the sufficiency of evidence to make out a case on close questions turning on legal technicalities, is not always to be relied on. It is the common experience of laws that police evidence in such a case is about the most unsatisfactory class of evidence they encounter; more unsatisfactory and less conclusive to the average mind, than circumstantial evidence even.

We have to assume, for the time being, that Callahan is one of the parties implicated in this outrage; for, under the benign provisions of the law of the land, no matter how heinous the crime with which a person stands charged, he is presumed to be inno

It is not claimed that young Cudahy was taken out of the State, or that there was any intention to take him out of the State, or to do other than restrain him of his liberty in the house where he was confined, or elsewhere in the vicinity, until such time as a ransom for his release should be paid. This does not constitute the offense of kidnapping, either at common law or under the statute of Nebraska, and for that reason is not punishable as such.

Child-stealing is inhibited by the Nebraska Criminal Code, but to constitute child-stealing, the child abducted must be under the age of ten years, whereas young Cudahy is fifteen years old, and for that reason his abduction does not offend against the section of the Criminal Code prohibiting childstealing.

Letters were sent to the elder Cudahy threatening to do injury to the boy if the ransom was not paid. Sending threatening letters the Criminal Code makes a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than $50 nor more than $500, or imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed ten days, or both. But the missives in question were not sent through the mails, and may not be "letters" within the statute. If it can be shown that Callahan sent the threatening letters, he may be punished under this statute, but otherwise not; for there were no aiders or abettors or accessories in misdemeanors.

By means of these letters the ransom money was extorted from the elder Cudahy; but both at common law and under the Criminal Code of Nebraska the crime of extortion is limited to the acts of persons in office which are done under the color of their office, and this will not include the extortion of the money as ransom for the boy's

return.

It is contended that in procuring the $25,000 ransom money as they did, Callahan and his associates are guilty of grand larceny. It is thought that the essential elements of this crime are wanting, even if we concede all that is claimed by the prosecuting attorney and the police, and that, therefore, a conviction cannot be had on this count. Under the Criminal Code of Nebraska the crime of grand larceny consists in "taking property of any value from the person of another without putting said person in fear by threats or the use of violence." To constitute the statutory crime the taking must be secretely and fraudulently, but not forcibly accomplished, in such a manner as not only to deprive the owner of his

the possession is essential to grand larceny, and that possession must be that of the owner or his agent. It cannot be contended that when the money was deposited by the elder Cudahy at the designated place, which was not on his own premises and not under his control, and he returned to his home in Omaha, that the money was in his possession and control within the meaning of the statute. Neither can it be contended that the owner of the land on which the deposit was secretely made, was the agent of Cudahy and that he had the money in his possession as such agent.

It is true that the possession of an owner may be constructive as well as actual, and he has such constructive possession when he knows the locality of the property, and would be legally entitled to take it into his actual possession whenever he desired, and could maintain an action for trespass for its taking by another. Was Cudahy entitled to retake the money after the deposit? Could he legally do so? Could he have maintained trespass against the owner of the land on which it was deposited had the latter discovered and removed it before the abductors took it away? It is thought not. Had he entered upon the land for the purpose of reclaiming it he would have been technically a trespasser, and liable as such. It cannot be claimed that the money deposited came under the head of "chattels lost on land," and that the owner is entitled to the protection of the principles of that doctrine of the law.

Where possession is obtained by means of a fraudulent trick or device, and with felonious intent to secure temporary possession and then convert to one's own use, this will constitute the crime of larceny under the statute. If the title as well as the possession is surrendered by the owner, no matter by what trick or device the owner is deceived thereto, this will not be larceny, but false pretense; for if the owner consents to the transfer of title, however that transfer is brought about, there can be no larceny. Thus a party who pays money voluntarily to another who has falsely represented himself as an officer having a warrant for the party's arrest for a crime, this does not constitute the offense of either larceny or robbery on the part of the person falsely representing himself to be an officer.

In the Cudahy case the money was not taken from either the person, the possession or the view of the owner, and the possession and title were both voluntarily surrendered by him. At the direction of the abductors, and as a pay and compensation for the return of his son, the elder Cudahy made payment of the money to unknown parties in the manner and at the place designated by them, by depositing it at a lonely place agreed upon, and then going away and leaving it there. He saw no one, he heard no one, he did not and he does not know that there was any one, aside from himself, in the neighbor

hood at the time. When the money was taken from the agreed depositary it was neither in his possession, nor under his control, and,- so far as is known,- not in his view. He had voluntarily deposited according to agreement, for his assent to the proposition of the abductors constituted an agreement between them and him respecting the matter under negotiation, the services to be rendered by them in consideration of the payment of the money, the return of his son. He parted with the title and the possession of his own free will to the abductors, and trusted to their honor to carry out their part of the contract and return the boy. The contract was not a nudum pactum, it was a valid agreement, fully carried out on both sides. Cudahy got what he contracted for and paid for,- the possession of the boy. There is no element of larceny in this transaction, and Callahan cannot be convicted on this count, whether he was the man who went to the appointed depositary and took away the money, or merely afterward shared in the fund.

It is also charged that the manner in which the ransom money was procured constitutes robbery. Now, under the Nebraska statute, robbery is simply larceny accomplished by force, or violence, or putting in fear. Robbery is committed by force; larceny by stealth, and where there is no violence or circumstances of terror resorted to for the purpose of inducing the owner to part with his money for the safety of his person or other property, the crime is larceny; otherwise, if force or fear is used, it is robbery. The force may consist of physical violence, directly applied, or it may be constructive, by threats or otherwise putting in fear the person from whom the property is taken, and thereby overcoming his will. The fraudulent and felonious taking of property by a trick or device unaccompanied by violence or putting in fear, is not robbery.

The fear necessary to constitute robbery, must be such as to create a reasonable apprehension of danger, to the person or the property of the party robbed. If the transaction is attended with such circumstances as in common experience are likely to create an apprehension of danger, and to induce a man to part with his money for the safety of his person or property, he is put in fear. Actual fear need not be precisely and circumspectly shown, for the law in odium spoliatoris will presume fear when there appears to be good grounds therefor.

child delivered money to another upon threat that unless he did so the latter would destroy the child. Hotham, J., said he did not doubt this was sufficient to constitute robbery. In the second case, Eyre, C. J., said: A man may be said to take by violence who deprived the other of the power to resist, by whatever means he did it; and that he saw no sensible distinction between a personal violence to the party himself, and the case put by one of the justices of a man holding another's child over a river and threatening to throw it in unless he gave him money.

The taking must be against the person's will to constitute robbery; if he consents to the taking for any purpose, as for the purpose of prosecuting the robber, the taking will not constitute the crime of robbery. The taking must be from the person or possession or protection, in the presence of the person robbed. Anything taken from the view or protection is constructively from the person. Again, the property must be that of another than the accused, taken with a felonious intent; if he acted under a bona fide impression that the thing taken was his own property, then there is no robbery.

Viewed in any light we may choose, the getting of the ransom money is not robbery. Several of the necessary elements to constitute robbery are wanting. In the first place the money was not taken from the possession or protection or view of the elder Cudahy; it was not taken against his will, for he deposited it at a designated place in pursuance of a contract for the safe delivery of his son; he parted with the possession and the title voluntarily. And, lastly, the abductors had a right, under the circumstances, in view of the negotiations between the parties, to remove the money deposited under the bona fide impression that the thing taken was their own property. It is scarcely too much to say that there is not an element of robbery in the whole transaction. That the money was extorted by

means of threatening letters may be conceded without in any way changing the conclusion arrived at; because it may well be doubted whether this will inject an element of robbery into the transaction, the threat not being to injure the person or property of the elder Cudahy, but of a third person, which is manifestly not sufficient.

tence. There can be no conviction and punishment for falsely impersonating an officer, because there is no law in Nebraska State against it; or for kidnapping, or child-stealing, or extortion, because neither of these offenses, as defined by the common