FALSE PRETENSES. In law, willful mis representations of fact, whereby a person is in duced to part with money or other property to the person making the false statements or to another. By the common law of England, a man is not punishable as a criminal who has induced another, by fraudulent representations, to part with the property of money or goods, unless the loss occasioned by the deception be of a public nature. Larceny or theft was the only species of wrongful abstraction of articles of value which was recognized; and where the consent of the owner to the transaction was obtained, no matter how fraudulently, the loser was left to a civil action for deceit, or to an indictment for the crime of cheating. But neither of these reme dies was of sufficient scope to cover all cases of the obtaining of money or other property by false pretenses. and accordingly a statute was passed in the thirty-third year of Henry VIII., whereby it was enacted that if any person should falsely and deceitfully obtain any money, goods, etc., by means of any false token or counterfeit letter made in any other man's name, the offender should suffer any punishment short of death, at the discretion of the judge. This statute, how
ever, only reached the case of deception by use of a false writing or token; the statute 30 Geo. 11., e. 24, was therefore passed for the purpose of including all false pretenses whatsoever. Further alterations have been made by subsequent stat utes. The general principle is that, wherever a person fraudulently represents as an existing fact that which is not an existing fact, and so obtains money or other property from the victim of the deception, he commits an offense within the act. A false representation as to the hopes or expecta tions of the person making them, as a deceitful calculation of anticipated profits, or the like, is not a violation of the law, however it may mis lead the person to whom it is made. The pro visions of the statute of Geo. II. have been the basis of legislation on this subject in our States, but the penal statutes of a particular jurisdic tion must be examined, if the reader would be certain of the exact state of the law therein on this topic. (See CHEAT; FRAUD; LARCENY.) Con sult the authorities referred to under CRIMINAL LAW,