Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/535

THE NATURE OF AGENCY. 507 OF THE NATURE OF AGENCY. THAT the sphere of personality is not to be limited in even our usual and less accurate conceptions to the sphere of physical presence is becoming more and more evident with each day's advance in the arts of civilization. We now employ so many mechanisms, and they enable us to put forth our energies over such enormous distances, that we have almost ceased to be astonished at our powers. We regard these instruments as being, what in very truth they are, a mere lengthening of our limbs, extensions of the organic self, and this conception, accurate in the domain of daily common sense, is not less accurate in the domain of legal thought.^ It is similarly true that such self-extension is by no means con- fined to inorganic means. Men may and do act through other men in accomplishing results, which, when accompHshed, are their acts, to be attributed to them rather than to their instrumentalities. What is meant when it is said that one person acts through another? The essential matter, I believe, will be found to be this: that the one conceives a purpose which he intrusts to the 1 It has been held that even the definition of the merely physical person must in- clude more than the body and the limbs. Marentille v. Oliver, i Penn. (N. J.) 379 (1808) ; s. c. Ames's Cases on Torts, 27. "An injury to the clothes on one's back is a trespass to the person, Regina v. Day, i Cox, C. C. 207. So is the removal of an ulster from the plaintiff, Geraty v. Stern, 30 Hun, 426 ; or striking a cane in the plain- tiff's hand, Respublica v. De Longchamps, i Dal), iii ; or cutting a rope connecting the plaintiff with his slave, State v. Davis, i Hill, S. Ca. 46." Ames's Cases on I'orts, 27, n. 3. In Marentille v. Oliver it was held to be a battery to the person to strike a horse in the shafts of a carriage in which the plaintiff was riding. This case probably goes to the utmost verge of the law, but it would seem to be correct. The newly in- vented telautograph, by which a signature may, by an electric device, be duplicated at a distance in the very act of writing, illustrates the same extension of the personality. If by means of the telautograph I should write my name in Boston while actually seated in New York, the signature is as much made in Boston as if I should use a pen two hundred miles in length. But see, however. State v. Hall, 114 N. C. 909 (1894). In that case the defendant was indicted in North Carolina for murder. The murder was committed by shooting the deceased across the boundary line between North Caro- lina and Tennessee, So far as the case holds that the murder was committed in Ten- nessee and not in North Carolina, it would seem to be erroneous. The act is clearly a continuing act, beginning in one place and completed in another, and cannot be said to have been committed in either place alone. It would seem to have been the part of justice to hold that the defendant had rendered himself amenable to the jurisdiction of both States.