Commissioners of Salisbury v. Powe

BuefiN, J. The case may be within the mischief, against which the charter and ordinance were directed. Yet, if it be not within the enactment also, the action cannot be sustained. The ordinance was probably drawn in haste, under the panic inspired by the vicinity of a dangerous contagious disease. At all events, it is loosely worded — not directly providing, even against a person with the disease on him, entering the town. It recites, that small-pox was then at Gold-Hill, without any allusion to the period it had been there, and then enacts that every person from Gold-Hill is prohibted from coming into Salisbury. The expression, “ person from Gold-Hill,” is not to be construed so as to include every one who had been in that place, or came from it at any indefinite period before ; as that would be an unreasonable by-law, which could not be supported. No doubt, those persons were meant, who had been at Gold-Hill recently, and since it had been infected with small-pox, and who. therefore, might bring the disease with them. That would have been a reasonable precaution, which would have sustained an ordinance expressed in that manner. But such are not the terms of this ordinance. On the contrary, it uses simply the language quoted, “ a person from Gold-Hillwhich may have several other meanings, but not one that can include this case. A citizen of Salisbury will say of a citizen of Gold-Hill, whom he sees in Salisbury, that he is “ from Gold-Hill” — signifying his residence there. On the other hand, when one at Salís- *137 bury speaks of a person coming ¡there from “ Gold-Hill,” without any words referring to time, he means coming immediately or directly from it; and the same language in the law can only mean the same thing, with the addition, that the coming must be “from the place” after the law, forbidding it, was passed. The defendant did not come to Salisbury direct from Gold-TIill, nor had lie been there after the ordinance, and, therefore, lie is not within it. Pee Cueiam, Judgment affirmed.