Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/495

 4SS FEDERAL EBP,OBTEE. �as also do "drawing," "representation," "circular;" but it cannot be presumed that congress intended to prohibit the Baie and circulation of these things, and yet permit them to be distribnted by mail. Manifestly they were intended to be covered by the general designations used in section 2, and the latter, therefore, indicate to what class the things specified in section 1 must belong in order to be within the scope of the statute. Hence, although the word "writing" is not in section 2, it was evidently intended by that section to exclude from the mails ail obscene writings which were "publications" of the classes known as books, pamphlets, or papers; and I think it manifest, from what has been said, that congress did not regard a private letter as such a publication, or within the act of 1873. If covered by that act, private letters could be examined and destroyed under the authority given marshals to search for and seize "any such article or thing." So far as "papers" or "writings" are concerned, the act of 1873 does not appear to have been changed by subsequent legisla- tion. Section 2 of the act was revised by the act of July 1 2, 1876, in which the word "writing" was inserted in the list of non-mailable publications; but this was evidently done, not to enlarge the scope of the act of 1873, but bocause, inincor- porating that act into the Eevised Statutes of 1873, its sev- eral sections had been separated and classified, and, as they could not readily be viewed together as explaining each other, so much of section 1 was repeated in each separate section as was deemed necessary to make the meaning of thelaw clear. This repetition of the word "writing" in the Revision, there- fore, did not render non-mailable any writing not made so by the act of 1873, or not belongiiig to the classes of publi- cations, the sale and circulation of which that act sought to suppress. Similar repetitions of words of section 1 are found in the other, now separated, sections. Section 1 became sec- tion 5389 of the Eevised Statutes, in the division of crimes; section 2 appears in section 3893, among the postal laws; section 4 is found in section 1785, relating to the duties of oliicers; and section 5 is section 2492, concerning imports. In each of these the words "paper," "writing," etc., now ap- ����