Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/904

 890 FEDERAL REPORTEH. �mitted within the same six calendar months, but tlae court tbereupon shall give a single sentence, and shall proportion the ptinishment especially to the degree in which the abuse of the post-office establishment enters as an instrument inta such fraudulent schema and device." �Prior to this date there was a separation asked by the defendants, or by one of them, and prior to that the district attorney had corne into court, and by the consent of the court had entered a nolle prosequi as to two counts in the indictment, leaving but three counts remaining; and there was then a trial had of one of the defendants. A motion to quash the indictment -was filed by thia defendant, on the ground that the indictment contains five separate and distinct offences, when the statute provides that only three may be included in an indictment. The ground of the motion is based upon the faot that this statute limits the number of separate and distinct offences which may be included in a single indictment ; and it further rests upon the idea that the section creating the offence included this addition as to the manner in which the indictment shall be framed, and giving the number of different offences which may be included in it, is descriptive of the offence itself, and that, therefore, it is not within the power of the grand jury to return an indictment containing a greater number of offences than the number prescrilfld by the statute. If this be so, the grand jury had no power to return the indictment in the f orm in which it is ; the objection would be fatal to it. �I may remark that, in the administration of the criminal law, the criminal procedure and the criminal practice bas been greatly modified by express statute, both in England and in various states of the United States, and it bas been modified to a very considerable extent by the statutes of the United States. I may furthermore remark that we bave no general statute of the United States prescribing criminal pro- cedure, and that in the administration of criminal law, unless there be an express statute to the contrary, we are governed by the general common-law procedure; in the adiBÎnistra- tion of criminal law and in criminal jurisprudence we go to ����