Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/85

 FALSE IMPRISONMENT FALSEN 77 troduction of mail steamers it was the principal station for the Spanish, Portuguese, and Amer- ican packet service, and carried on an exten- sive trade with those countries. It exports pilchards, which are taken off its coast, tin, and copper, and imports timber, hemp, tallow, rum, sugar, grain, wine, and fruits. It has large ship-building yards, roperies, breweries, and a flourishing trade in maritime supplies. The number of vessels registered as belonging to the port is 150. The royal Cornwall poly- technic society, the first institution of the kind established in England, founded in 1833 for the encouragement of the sciences, art, and indus- try, meets annually at Falmouth. FALSE IMPRISONMENT. The jealous watch- fulness of the common law of England for the protection and preservation of personal liberty is nowhere proved more distinctly than in the provisions of the law respecting what is techni- cally called false imprisonment. In their ex- tent and fulness they are quite peculiar to that law ; and while the principles on which they rest, and some of the rules derived from them, may be discerned even in Saxon times, they have certainly been developed and systematized in later ages, as the worth of personal liber- ty became more accurately estimated and the means of preserving it better understood. False imprisonment, in the law of England and the United States, may now be defined as any in- tentional and unlawful restraint of a person. It may be : 1, the restraint or arrest of a per- son under color of law, by means of an illegal or insufficient process; 2, such restraint or arrest by means of a legal instrument, but at an illegal time, as on Sunday or any other day generally prohibited, or at any time which is illegal and unauthorized in respect to the per- son restrained ; 3, without color or pretence of law, as when one confines another to his room or house without legal authority to do so. False imprisonment may be with force or wholly without force ; as if one, without touch- ing another, by words only, or .even by gestures only, compels him by fear to abstain from go- ing where he has a right to go, or to go where he wishes not to go and is under no obligation to go. It is false imprisonment to confront a man in the street, and, without touching him, constrain him to arrest his course or change it against his will. The remedies for false impris- onment are threefold : 1, an action for trespass vi et armis, when the party imprisoned may recover not only such damages as are capable of being estimated on the evidence, but such further sum as the jury, in cases where the party had no reason to believe his conduct lawful, may consider proportioned to the character of the wrong; 2, the writ of habeas corpus for immediate relief from the restraint; 3, indict- ment at common law for false imprisonment of any kind, for which the guilty party may be ly punished. In some of the United States there are various statutory provisions respecting certain kinds of false imprisonment. FALSE PRETENCES. Any one who acquires property by means of false pretences has no legal title to it, and it may be recovered by the party from whom it was thus obtained, and who is still the legal owner. (See FEAUD.) But besides this civil remedy, the statutes of England and of the United States make the ob- taining of property by false pretences an in- dictable offence. The expressions in our state statutes are various ; but in general, any one who by means of false pretences, and with a fraudulent design, obtains possession of money, merchandise, goods, or wares of any descrip- tion, or obtains the signature of another to a deed, note, or other contract or writing for the transfer of property or the payment of money, becomes liable under the statute. It is impos- sible to define precisely the false pretences which expose one to this punishment. It is obvious that they cannot be slight suggestions which are without foundation, or open and ob- vious falsehoods by which no man in his senses would be deceived. In the first place, they must be intended to produce an injurious effect ; and in the next place, they must be such as would be likely to deceive a person of ordinary discretion, who is to a reasonable ex- tent on his guard. They must relate to exist- ing facts, and not be mere promises of some- thing to be done in the future. If the pretences or misrepresentations are numerous, and most of them are honest, but some one of them is at once material, false, and fraudulent, the offence is committed ; and this is so, although the statements which were true exercised the prin- cipal influence in obtaining the property for the guilty party, provided it would not have been given him but for the statement also which was false. It may be remarked that no false pre- tences made after the contract was completed will constitute the offence, even if they were made before the property was delivered, unless the delivery or execution was at first withheld, and then brought about by the false pretences. At common law the nearest provision to this of the modern statutes was one which exposed to indictment and punishment as a cheat a person who obtained possession of money or goods by means of what were called false tokens, by which was meant forged papers, or other counterfeit symbols or evidence of own- ership or authority. Language similar to this ancient rule is used in some of our statutes, as in those of Pennsylvania. The first statute against false pretences in England was 30 George II., c. 24 ; and this has been followed by the different states of the Union, more or less exactly. The most common instances of indictments under these statutes are for the obtaining of goods by buyers under false pre- tences as to their responsibility or resources ; and it was mainly to suppress these that the statutes were intended. FALSEN, Knntsen Magnus, a Norwegian his- torian, born at Opslo, Sept. 17, 1782, died in Christiania, Jan. 13, 1830. He was a son of