Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/152

 140 FEDERAL REPORTER. �■\ ■*■ ■ \ �feitures created by statute are given at large to any common informer; or, in other words, to any such person or persans as mil sue for the same; and hence such actions are called^o;?- ular actions because they are given to the people in general. Sometimes one part is given to the crown, to the poor, or to Bome public use, and the other part to the informer or pros- ecutor; and then the suit is called a qui tam action because it is brought by a person ' qui tam pro domino rege, etc., quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur.' " 3 Black. Com. 4th Eng. Ed. (Kerr) 149. In the year 1576 (18 Eliz. c. 5) parliament passed an act entitled "An act to redress disorders in com- mon informers," which commences as follows: "For redress- ing of divers disorders in common informers, and for better execution of penal laws, be it enacted that every informer upon every penal statute shall exhibit bis suit in proper per- son, etc., and that none shall be admitted or received to pur- sue against aoy person or persons upon any penal statute but by way of information or original action, and not other- wise." This act çarefuUy regulates ail such informations and actions, and by sections 6 and 7 suits upon penaltiea given. to any certain person, or body politio or corporate, and suits by any ofScer who bas been used to maintain such suit, are excepted from its operation, leaving it in fact to apply only to popular actions; or, as it is expressed in the statute, suits upon penalties "limited or granted generally to any per- son that will sue." The legislature of New York passed a very similar act for the regulation of suits on penal statutes. St. 3 Feb. 1788. It is entitled "An act to redress disorders by common informers, and to prevent malicious informations." By the tenth section its operation is restricted to suits where the penalty is by statute given to "any person suing for the same." N. Y. Laws, J. & V. 188. In bis History of the English Law, 509, Crabb says, speaking of the time of Eliza- beth: "Owing tothenumber of penal statutes which now ex- isted, and the encouragement which they held out to needy persons to bring informations for the sake of the forfeitures, two statutes were made in this reign, namely in the eight- eenth and thirty-first years of this queen, for the purpose of ����