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![handle is hein.slavery/ssactsengr0540 and id is 1 raw text is: REGINA V. WILLIAM LESLEY
substance of the article offered for sale; where the purchaser intends to buy a
particular substance, and the seller passes off to him a counterfeit. The same
principle governs Regina v. Abbott, which is identical in its facts with the present
case, and Regina v. Dundas (6 Cox's C. C. 380), where the article sold was falsely
pretended to be Everett's blacking, a known article of value in the place of the
sale, and was a totally different thing.
In the case of Regina v. Bryan, the case of the plated spoons represented as
equal to Elkington's A, the Judges who constituted the majority decided that case
on the principle that indefinite praise upon a matter of opinion is not within the
limit of indictable offences.
Dissatisfaction has been expressed with that decision as if it must operate as an
encouragement to falsehood and fraud, and so lead to mischief; but it should be
recollected what an extremely calamitous thing it is for a respectable man to have
to stand his trial at a criminal bar upon an indictment brought against him for
cheating by a false pretence at the [219] instance of a dissatisfied purchaser. It is
easy for an imaginative person to fall into an exaggeration of praise of the article
which he is selling, and if such statements are indictable a purchaser, who wishes to
get out of a bad bargain made by his own negligence, might have recourse to an
indictment, on the trial of which the vendor's statement on oath would be excluded,
instead of being obliged to bring an action where each party would be heard on
equal terms. It is of great public importance to endeavour to define the line within
which false representation becomes indictable.
In Regina v. Bryan, my Brother Willes, who deserves well of all who take interest
in the administration of the law, differed from the majority in the decision; he
agreed in the principle that ought to govern, but differed in the application of that
principle to the facts of that case. The Judges thought the representation that
the quality of the plating of the spoons, and the quantity of silvering laid on them
by the electrotype process, was equal to Elkington's A, and that the material was
the best, was exaggerated praise on a matter of opinion, and so not indictable;
opinion not being directly cognizable by the senses. My Brother Willes thought
it a representation on a matter of fact.
Wightman J.-I only wish to add with reference to the cheese case and Bryan's
case one observation. If the prisoner had said that the cheeses were equal to the
tasters produced that would have fallen within Bryan's case; but he said to the
prosecutor These tasters are part of the very cheese I propose to sell to you
and therefore it was a representation of a definite fact.
The other learned Judges concurred.
Conviction affirmed.
[220] 1860.
REGINA V. WILLIAM LESLEY.
(The defendant was convicted on an indictment charging him with assaulting the
prosecutors on the high seas, and falsely imprisoning and detaining them..
The prosecutors were Chilian subjects and had been ordered by the government
of Chili to be banished from that country to England. The defendant, being
master of an English merchant vessel lying in the territorial waters of Chili
near Valparaiso, contracted with the Chilian government to take the prose-
cutors from Valparaiso to Liverpool; and they were accordingly brought on
board the defendant's vessel by the officers of the government and were carried
by the defendant to Liverpool under his contract. Held, that, although the
conviction could not be supported for the assault and imprisonment in the
Chilian waters, it must be sustained for that which was done out of the Chilian
territory; and that, although the defendant was justified in receiving the
prosecutors on board his vessel in Chili, yet that justification ceased when he
passed the line of Chilian jurisdiction, and the detention of the prisoners and
conveying them to Liverpool was a wrong intentionally planned and executed
in pursuance of the contract, amounting to a false imprisonment and triable by
English law.)
[S.C. 29L. J.M. C. 97; 1L. T. 452; 24J. P. 115; 6Jur. N.S. 202; 8W.R. 220;
sub nomine R. v. Leslie, 8 Cox C. C. 269. Considered, R. v. Keyn, 1876, 2 Ex. D.
63. Referred to, Seymour v. Scott, 1863, 8 L. T. 511 ; Phillips v. Eyre, 1870,
L. R. 6 Q. B. I ; Francis, 'imcs & Co. IV. Cair, 1899, 81 L. T. 50.]
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