Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/291

 UNITED STATES V, DE QUILFELDT. 279 �prudence of the Uniied Stutep. Our offences ara -^ureiy stat- utory, and we do nofc look to the common law, or tha law of ihe states, to furnish us any element or characteristio of an offence. U. S. \. Coppersmith, e Fbd, Eep. 198; U. S. v. Wahk, 5 Dill. 68. �This statute against counterfeiting says "every person who ialsely makes, forges, or counterfeits any coin," etc., shall be punished. It makes no exception in favor of married women, and it may \rell be doubted if the courts can engraft an excep- tion on the statute. Commonwealth v. Lewis, 1 Met. 151, 153. I am inclined to believe it is the logical resuit of the doctrine that our crimes are statutory, and that we have no common law of crimes, except so far as the statutes have adopted it, in matters of evidence and practice, that no exemption exista «nless congress defines and declares it. The presumption of ■coercion may be a rule of evidence, but the exemption of the wife on account of it is a rule of law that congress has not 4eclared, I have not found the point diseussed, nor any case reeognizing this doctrine of marital coercion, in the federal courts. There are cases reeognizing insanity and perha^^s infancy as a defence, but, generally, the cases are those of <5ommon-law crimes on the high seas or elsewhere, of which these courts have jurisdiction, and which are defined not by ctatute, but by the adoption by congress of the common law in its fuUest scope. Insanity was recognized as a defence to statutory offences in U. S. v. Schultz, 6 McLean, 121, and U. S. y. Lancaster, 7 Biss. 440, and there may be other cases. I am not willing, however, without consultation with my brother judges on this bench, to exclude this defence on that theory, and shall, therefore, for the purposes of this motion, assume that we are to be governed by the common-law prin- <;iple that a wife committing an offence in the presence of her husband is prima facie presumed to act by his command, and is, therefore, not guilty unless it can be shown that she was in fact not governed by him. �The testimony was exoluded on the authority of the state- ment that "if a, feme covcrt he indicted as a feme sole, her ����