Samuel Blatchford

“ Rep., that he took the point in the supreme court of Vermont that the statute of that state was repugnant to the eighth amendment to the constitution of the United States and to that of Vermont, in that it allowed 'cruel and unusual punishment.' That court said in its opinion: 'The constitutional inhibition of cruel and unusual punishments, or excessive fines or bail, has no application. The punishment imposed by statute for the offense with which the respondent, O'Neil, is charged, cannot be said to be excessive or oppressive. ”

“ If a person, by himself, clerk, servant, or agent, sells, furnisher, or gives away, or owns, keeps, or possesses, with intent to sell, furnish, or give away, intoxicating liquor or cider in violation of law, he shall forfeit for each offense to the state, upon the first conviction, ten dollars and costs of prosecution ”

“ It is the usual course of trade for merchants receiving an order from a considerable distance for goods in small quantities, to send the same by express, C. O. D., when the order is not from a regular customer or a party of known responsibility. ”

“ That, in the usual and ordinary course of business of said carrier in such cases, the said express company delivered each of said packages to the consignee named upon said tag, at Rutland, and at the same time, and concurrently with such delivery, received the amount of the said bill in the C. O. D. envelope, the amount of freight for the transportation of said package from Whitehall to Rutland, and the charges for returning said money to the respondent at Whitehall. ”

“ That upon the receipt of said orders the respondent has in each case measured out the liquors called for in his order at his store in Whitehall aforesaid, and packed the same in jugs or other vessels, and attached to each package a tag, upon which was written the name and address of the party ordering the same, and delivered each package, so directed and addressed, at Whitehall, aforesaid, to the National Express Company, a New York corporation, a common carrier, doing business between New York and Montreal, and including the route between said Whitehall and said Rutland ”

“ It was entirely immaterial how the liquor sold by O'Neil at Rutland came to be there, for sale there,-whether it was made there, or whether it was brought in some way from the state of New York. The only question was whether it was at Rutland so as to be capable of sale there, and whether it was sold there.
Moreover, under the practice in the supreme court of Vermont, the very error relied upon must appear affirmatively in the exceptions. Sequin v. Peterson, 45 Vt. 255; State v. Preston, 48 Vt. 12; Hathaway v. Insurance Co., Id. 335; State v. ”