REWARD, in a legal sense, some encour agement which the law holds out for exertions in bringing certain classes of criminals to jus tice. The courts may order the sheriff of the county, in which certain offenses have been committed, to pay to persons who have been active in securing the apprehension of offenders charged with murder or with shoot ing, cutting, stabbing, wounding or poisoning, or with rape, burglary, housebreaking, robbery, arson or cattle-stealing, or with being accessory before the fact to any of such offenses, or to receiving any stolen property, a reasonable sum to compensate them' for expense, exertion and loss of time. By another statute it is a felony, punishable by penal servitude to the extent of seven years, to corruptly take any reward for helping a person to property stolen • or embez zled, unless all due diligence to bring the offenders to trial has been used. States, cities,
municipalities, corporations,. individuals, etc., may offer rewards for information leading to the detection and. punishment of any sort of crime, and this is done not infrequently to in duce some one having knowledge of, a crime to disclose it, receiving protection. as regards any complicity of his own. In Great Britain an advertisement offering a reward for the return of stolen or lost property, using words purporting • that no questions will be asked•or inquiry made after the person• producing the property, renders the advertiser, .printer and publisher liable. to forfeit $250; but. in the United States such advertisements are common. Some courts have held that a reward may be withdrawal by advertiserneut; , also, that it lapses after a reasonable time.