the alleged offense was committed at St. Louis. Counsel would seem to contend that the physical absence of the accused from St. Louis, when the offer was received by the company and when the agreement was concluded, rendered it impossible that he could have committed the alleged offense at that city. In substance, the contention is that an individual could not, in law or within the meaning of the Constitution, commit a crime within a State in which he is not physically present at the time the crime is committed.

The constitutional requirement is that the crime shall be tried in the State and District where committed, not necessarily in the State or District where the party committing it happened to be at the time. This distinction was brought out and recognized in Palliser's case, 136 U. S. 257, 265. Palliser was indicted in the District Court of the United States for the District of Connecticut for violating certain statutes relating to the disposal of postage stamps and forbidding postmasters not only to dispose of postage stamps in the payment of debts or in the purchase of commodities or to pledge them, but also to sell or dispose of them except for cash. By letter written and mailed at New York and addressed to a postmaster in Connecticut, Palliser made to that officer an offer of contract which could not have been accepted by the latter without violating the above statutes. This court held that the offer in Palliser's letter was a tender of a contract with the intent to induce the postmaster to sell postage stamps for credit in violation of his duty, and that the case, therefore, came within section 5451 of the Revised Statutes, providing that "every person who promises, offers, or gives or causes or procures to be promised, offered or given, any money or other thing of value, or makes or tenders any contract, undertaking, obligation, gratuity or security for the payment of money, or for the delivery or conveyance of anything of value to any officer of the United States, with intent to influence him to commit or aid in committing, or to collude in or allow any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud on the United States,

or to induce him to do or omit to do any act in violation of his lawful duty, shall be punished" by fine and imprisonment.

The question arose whether Palliser, who did not go into Connecticut, could be punished in that State for the offense alleged against him. This court, speaking by Mr. Justice Gray, said: "The petitioner relics on those provisions of the Constitution of the United States which declare that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have the right to be tried by an impartial jury of the State and District wherein the crime shall have been committed. Art. 3, §2; Amendments, art. 6. But the right thereby secured is not a right to be tried in the District where the accused resides, or even in the District in which he is personally at the time of committing the crime, but in the District 'wherein the crime shall have been committed.' When a crime is committed partly in one District and partly in another it must, in order to prevent an absolute failure of justice, be tried in either District, or in that one which the legislature may designate; and Congress has accordingly provided, that 'when any offense against the United States is begun in one judicial District and completed in any other, it shall be deemed to have been committed in either, and may be dealt with, inquired of, tried, determined and punished in either District, in the same manner as if it had been actually and wholly committed therein.' Rev. Stat. § 731." In that case the court said it was universally admitted that when a shot fired in one jurisdiction strikes a person in another jurisdiction, the offender may be tried where the shot takes effect.

If the sending by the defendant to the Rialto Company from Chicago to St. Louis of the offer above referred to was the beginning of negotiations for an agreement in violation of section 1782, the agreement between the parties was completed at the time of the acceptance of the defendant's offer at St. Louis on November 18, 1902. Then the offense was committed, and it was committed, at St. Louis, notwithstanding the defendant was not personally present in Missouri when his offer was accepted and the agreement was completed.

The principle announced in Palliser's case was reaffirmed in Horner v. United States, 143 U. S. 207, in which it was held that the District Court of the United States in Illinois had jurisdiction to try one charged with having violated the statute relating to the sending of lottery matter in the mails, in that he had unlawfully caused to be delivered to a certain person in that District lottery circulars conveyed by mail in a sealed letter that he had deposited in the mail at New York, addressed to and to be delivered to such person in Illinois. The fact that the accused was in New York when the lottery cir culars were mailed, and not personally present in Illinois when the offense was completed by the delivery there of the lottery circulars to the person to whom they were sent, was held to be immaterial and not to defeat the jurisdiction of the Federal court in Illinois to try the accused.

It cannot be maintained, according to the adjudged cases, that the personal absence of the defendant Burton from St. Louis, at the time his offer was accepted, and when the agreement between him and the company was completed and became binding, as between the parties, deprived the Federal court there of jurisdiction. He sent his offer to St. Louis with the intent that it should be there accepted and consummated. Having been completed at that city in conformity with the intention of both parties, an offense was, in the eye of the law, committed there, and when the court below assumed jurisdiction of this case it did not offend the constitutional requirement that a crime against the United States shall be tried in the State and District where it was committed.

Other questions were discussed by counsel, but we have alluded to all involving the substantial rights of the accused that are mentioned in their briefs of points and authorities, and which we deem it necessary to notice.

MR. JUSTICE MCKENNA concurs in the judgment based on the count charging the receipt of forbidden compensation, but does not concur in the judgment on the count charging simply an agreement to receive compensation. He is of opinion that

BREWER, WHITE and PECKHAM, JJ., dissenting. 202 U.S.

the agreement to receive and the receipt of compensation constitute under the circumstances of this case but one offense. Judgment affirmed.

MR. JUSTICE BREWER, with whom MR. JUSTICE WHITE and MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM concurred, dissenting.

A conviction of plaintiff in error on an indictment charging substantially the same offenses as are charged in the present case was reversed by this court. 196 U. S. 283. In the opinion then filed it was stated that four Justices of this court (the writer of this being among the number) were of the opinion that the matters charged against the defendant were not made offenses by the statute under which the indictment was found. Nothing was said in that opinion in respect to this matter beyond the simple statement of the conclusions of the several Justices. As one of the four I think the importance of the case justifies me in stating the reasons which led to that conclusion, and which inducès belief that the present conviction is wrongful.

The statute (sec. 1782, Rev. Stat.) forbids a Senator or other official of the Government to "receive or agree to receive any compensation whatever, directly or indirectly, for any services rendered, or to be rendered, to any person, either by himself or another, in relation to any proceeding, contract, claim, controversy, charge, accusation, arrest, or other matter or thing in which the United States is a party, or directly or indirectly interested, before any Department, court-martial, bureau, officer, or any civil, military, or naval commission whatever." It was charged in the indictment that there was pending in the Post Office Department a proceeding to inquire whether the Rialto Grain and Securities Company was conducting a scheme for obtaining money by false pretenses through the mails of the United States and whether a fraud order, as it is called, should be issued against said company, and that the defendant, as a Senator of the United States, unlawfully agreed to

* 202 U. S. BREWER, WHITE and PECKHAM, JJ., dissenting.

receive from the said corporation compensation for services rendered by him in relation to such proceeding before that Department. It was not charged that the United States was a party to the proceeding, nor that it would either make or lose any money or property, whatever might be the result, but only that it was directly and indirectly interested. The question is therefore distinctly presented whether a proceeding in one of the Departments of the Government, in which it does not appear that the United States is pecuniarily interested in the result, will neither make nor lose by the issue of the proceeding, whatever it may be, is one in which it is "directly or indirectly interested." Unless the statute by clear intendment includes the transaction, any extension beyond its meaning so as to include the transaction would be, under the elementary rule governing the interpretation of criminal statutes, simply judicial legislation, as it would be by judicial construction making that a crime which Congress has not so made, and thereupon imposing punishment. United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76; Sarlls v. United States, 152 U. S. 570; United States v. Harris, 177 U. S. 305. There is a certain broad sense in which the word "interest" is sometimes used, which describes the relation which the Government has to the acts of all its officials, to all proceedings in courts or in Departments, and indeed to the conduct of all its citizens. It is interested in seeing justice and righteousness obtain everywhere. It is interested in seeing that no wrongful conduct shall prevail. But so is every official and every citizen interested. It is not an interest which separates and distinguishes the Government from the citizens, but it is that interest which all have, whether government or citizens, in the orderly and just management of affairs, in honorable and right living. It is that interest which a father or head of a family has in the good conduct of all the members of his family. But the word "interest" as found in the law books refers to pecuniary profit and loss, and that Congress used the word "interested" in its common legal acceptation is as clear and certain as anything can be.