Benjamin Robbins Curtis

“ Congress has considered it proper that an oath should be taken by the applicant. The question is, whether this security of an oath was intended to be confined to one of the documents. The language employed is capable of such a construction, but it is also capable of meaning that the security of an oath was to extend to both. In our judgment, the latter is to be deemed to have been intended by congress; and we therefore hold that so much of the first indictment as charged that an oath as to the agreement was required by the act of 1813, was correct in point of law. ”

“ The indictment charged, that in order to obtain the allowance of bounty money, on account of the employment of a vessel in the cod fishery, of which vessel he was the agent, he made oath before the collector of the district of Barnstable, where the vessel was enrolled and licensed, that a certain paper, produced by him to the collector, was the original agreement made with the fishermen employed on board the vessel during the fishing season then last past; that three fourths of the crew so employed were citizens of the United States, or not subjects of any foreign prince or state ”