D - Making or Keening Coinage Tools

ad un futuro spendimento che il delinquente non ebbe tempo di commettere a causa di sua cattura"261 .

262

D - Making or Keening Coinage Tools

We saw last year that thoughts which merely prepare the way for the commission of an offence do not constitute an "attempt" when they are not followed by a commencement of the execution of the offence: such acts may be created as an offence in themselves and be therefore subjected to a special punishment.

Now, on the one hand, the just preoccupation of the law of preventing a grave offence and, on the other hand, the necessity of repressing those acts which independently of any future execution of it, present in themselves a certain completed injury of the rights of the State and the public and show a clear intention on the part of the agent of perpetrating another even greater injury, have given rise to the necessity of creating as a special offence the unlawful making or possessing of dies or instruments or machines exclusively intended for coining. Section 172(1) lays down:

"Whosoever, without the special permission of the Government, makes or knowingly keeps in his possession any die or other instrument or machine exclusively intended for coining shall, on conviction, be liable to hard labour for a term from thirteen months to two years".

The important thing to notice in connection with this provision in that, in order that the crime racy subsist, the dies or other instruments or machine made or knowingly kept by the defendant, must be exclusively intended for coining. If such tools can also, at the same time, be put to some other use, "mancherebbe ongi soggetto di punizione, poiché non si avrebbe un doto oho volesse e palesare, senza lascia dubbio alcuno, la determinazione precisa del celinquente di commettere quel falso che la legge unicamente mira a prevenire, ne' si avrebbe d'altronde quelle offesa che mira a reprimere la usurpazione del diritto annesso alla sovranità, quale' quella di coniare le pubbliche monete"263 . The adverb “exclusively" removes every doubt as to the use for

261 Law Reports, Vol. XXIV, Po IV, p. 917 262 But vide Rex vs Giuseppe Grech, 11/6/1912; and Rex vs Riccardi Bonnici, 22.11.1912, which appear to conflict with this doctrine. 263 Roberti, op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 233, n. 911