Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/317

 SIO FEDEBAIj bbpobtes. �appears in the case, disclose its character of agent. The court added : "The defendant» here, as in that case — i. e., Canal Bank v. Bank of Alhany, — have obtained the money of the plaintiff without right, and on the exhibition of a forged title as genuine, the forgery being unknown to both parties. The defendants ought not, in conscience, to retain the money, be- cause it does not belong to them, and for the further reason that the defendants and the previous indorsers have each, on the same principle, their remedy over against the party to whom they respectively paid the money, until the vrong-doer is finally made to pay. If that party should be irresponsi- ble, or if he cannot be found, the loss onght to fall on the party who without due caution took the bill from him." �The principle thus stated is, perhaps, broad enough to charge with liability even an agent who bas disclosed his agency; but the question was not directly raised, and can hardly be thought to bave been with in the consideration of the court, especially as the opinion in the case referred to as eettling the principle expressly distinguished the case of an agent who disclosed his agency from the case then before the court. �The case of The Kingston Bank v. Ettinge, 40 N. T. 391-400, cites these cases m support of the general proposition that the fact that the party receiving the money was an agent, who had paid over to his principal, would be no defenee. It does not advert to the distinction between an agent whose agency is disclosed to the party paying, and one who acts as himself a principal. Nor was the case before the court one of agency. �In the same case the court cites and relies on Rheel v. Hicks, 25 N. Y. 289, where it was held that money paid to a public of&cer in compromise of a claim against the plaintiff, as the putative father of an alleged unborn bastard child, could be recovered back upon proof that the woman was not in fact pregnant, although the defendant had paid it over to the county. That seems to have been the case of money iUe- gally exacted by a public offieer, and therefore within some of the cases first above cited ; not a case in wbich the party re- ����