Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/69

 209 U.S. Opinion of th Cout. rejected. If the writer of the letter i Person' hd handed it' to the. man addressed, in the building without a w6rd, and the latter 'had read it then and there, we suppose that no one would deny that the writer fell within the statute. We can see no distinction betwee Personally deliverin the letter and sending it by , servant of the writer. If the solicitation is in the building the statute does not require Personal presence, so that the question is narrowed to whether the sqlicitation alleged took place in the building or outside. The solicitation was made at some time, somewhere. The time determines the place. It was not. complete when the letter was dropped into the post. If the letter had miscarried or had ben burned, the defendant would not have accom- plished a solicitation. The court below was misled by' eases in which, upon an indictment for obtaining money by false pretenses, the crime was held to have been committed at the place where drafts were put into the post by the defrauded Person. Commonwealth v. Wood, 142 Massachusetts, 459, 462; Rina v. Jones, 4 Cox C. C. 198. But these stand on the analogy of the acceptance by mail of an offer and throw no light. A relation already existed between the parties, and it is because. of that relation that posting the letter made the transaction complete. See Brauer v. Shaw, 168 Massachusetts, 198, 200. Iere a relation was to be established, just as there is. at {he firsi; stage of a contract When an offer is to be made. Whethcr or riot, as Mr. Langdell th!nks, nothing less than bringing the offer to the actual consciousness of the person addressed would do, Contr. �1, certainly putting a letter into a post office is neither an offer nor a solicitation. "An offer is nothing until it is communicated to the party to whom it is made." Thomso v. James, 18 Ct. of Sess. Cas. (2d Series), 1, 10, 15. Therefore, we repeat, until after the letter had en- tered the building the offense w not complete, but, when it had been read, the case was not affected by the nature of the intended means by which it was put into the hands of the Person addressed. Neither can.the case be affected'by specu-

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