Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/876

 664 FEDSBAL BEPOBTBB. �reeognized in the statutes of the United States, inasmuch as section 5392 contains a specifie provision that a ■conviction for perjury shall render the offender incapable of giving tes- timony in any court of the United States ; and, bo far as T have discoveredj a similar effect has not been given by statute to any other crime. But I do net see how the question under consideration must not be eonsidered as disposed of by the decision of the supreme court of the United States in the case of Fox y. The State of Ohio, 5 How. 410, where the power of a state to punish the act of passing a counterfeit coin of the United States with intent to defraud was called in ques- tion and upheld upon the ground that it was a mere cheat. It will not be pretended, I think, that any act such as the act of passing counterfeit coin is described to be by the supreme court in the case of Fox v. The State of Ohio, was> by the com- mon law, deemed to be an infamous crime. The effect of the decision of the supreme court in Fox v. The State of Ohio is in nowise modified by the subsequent decision of the same court in U. S. v. Marigold, 9 How. 264, where the power bt the United States to punish the act of passing counterfeit coin of the United States was upheld upon the ground that the couit traced "both the offence and the authority to punish it to the power given by the constitution to coin money, and to the correspondent and necessary power and obligation to pro- tect and to preserve in its purity this constitutional curfency for the benefit of the nation;" for in U. 8. v. Marigold the court is careful to re-affirm, in express terms, ail the doc^ trines deelared in Fox v. The State of Ohio. So that accord- ing to the laws. of the United States, as expounded by the supreme court of the United States, the act of passing coun- terfeit coin with intent to defraud is, in its nature, nothing more than a mere cheat. Authority in the United States to punish this form of cheating results from the obligation cast upon the United States by the grant of power to coin money, but the character of the act is not changed thereby. It is still a cheat and nothing more. �It is pushing the argument too far to say that the supreme court, in upholding the authority of the United States to pun- ��� �