Joseph P. Bradley

“ Am I the keeper of another man's conscience?' No one can hesitate to say that such a man voluntarily aids in the perpetration of the offence, and, morally speaking, is almost, if not quite, as guilty as the principal offender. ”

“ With whatever impunity a man may lend money or sell goods to another who he knows intends to devote them to a use that is only malum prohibitum, or of inferior criminality, he cannot do it, without turpitude, when he knows, or has every reason to believe, that such money or goods are to be used for the perpetration of a heinous crime, and that they were procured for that purpose. In the words of Chief Justice Eyre, in Lightfoot v. Tenant, [2] 'the man who sells arsenic to one who, he knows, intends to poison his wife with it, will not be allowed to maintain an action on his contract. ”

“ In our judgment it is altogether too narrow a view of the responsibility of a vendor in such a case as the present. Where to draw the precise line between the cases in which the vendor's knowledge of the purchaser's intent to make an unlawful use of the goods, will vitiate the contract, and those in which it will not, may be difficult. ”

“ Sir James Mansfield said: 'The merely selling goods, knowing that the buyer will make an illegal use of them, is not sufficient to deprive the vendor of his just right of payment; but to effect that, it is necessary that the vendor should be a sharer in the illegal transaction.' This seems to have been the view taken by the judge who tried this cause below, and which he applied to this case. ”