Scottish Court of Session Decisions

This was an indictment charging a high crime and offence under the 26th section of the Post-Office Act, 7 Will. IV. and 1 Vict. c. 36, which provides that “every person employed under the Post-Office, who shall steal, or shall for any purpose whatever, embezzle, secrete, or destroy a post-letter,” shall be transported for seven years, or imprisoned for a term not exceeding three years. There were also charges of theft and breach of trust and embezzlement applicable to the letter and money after mentioned. It appeared from the narrative that M'Elfrish, a rural letter-carrier authorised by the Post-Office to receive letters for the post, received from the Inspector of Poor at Ecclesmachan an open letter with addressed envelope and the sum of £1, 16s. 6d., with which he undertook to purchase at Linlithgow a Post-Office order in favour of the addressee, and then deliver the letter with order enclosed to the postmaster at Linlithgow for transmission to the addressee. The panel destroyed the letter and kept the money.

Argued for panel—The indictment, so far as laid on the statute, is irrelevant. There was no post-letter in the sense of the statute. By sec. 41 of the statute, delivery to a letter-carrier is made equivalent to delivery to the Post-Office, but here the panel became the agent of the sender, and until the money-order was purchased and enclosed there could be no implied delivery to the Post-Office.

Argued for the Crown—The objection would apply to every case in which a letter-carrier receives money for the post stamps to be put on the letter. In Regina v. Bickerstaff, Aug. 14, 1868, 2 Carrington & Kirwan, 761, the plea in precisely similar circumstances, that it was not the panel's duty to procure money-orders, and that he had an act of agency to perform, was repelled by J. Cresswell.