Western Maryland Railroad v. Manro

Brent, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. We have carefully examined the authorities cited in the argument of this case, and do not think that they furnish any support for the admissibility of the evidence which was offered and rejected by the Court below. To enable the appellant to recover the amount of stock subscribed by the appellee, it was necessary under the decision in Taggart vs. The Western Maryland Railroad Co., 24 Md., 538 , to prove the payment by the appellee of one dollar upon each share of stock at the time of his subscription. . To prove this payment the declarations of Jacob Mathias, then deceased, were offered in evidence.

He was one of the commissioners authorized to receive subscriptions to the stock of the Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick Railroad Company, afterwards changed by the Act of 1853, ch. 37, to the name of the appellant, and did take the subscription of the appellee for five shares. The offer was made to prove' by a witness, who was the first acting treasurer for the commissioners, that shortly after the date of the above subscription, Mathias handed to him five dollars, and then said to him that the appellee “ had paid him (Mathias) the said sum of five dollars for and on account of the said subscription of stock at the time of making the subscription.” It is contended that this evidence was admissible upon the ground that it was the declaration of a party, since deceased, made against his pecuniary interest. We have been referred to a number of authorities upon this point, and especially to the case of Higham vs. Ridgway, 1 East., 109. While its conclusion has been acquiesced in, a great deal of learning has been exhausted in subsequent cases in discussing the'reason and application of its doctrine.

It is unnecessary to review in this opinion these decisions, and examine the soundness of the distinctions established by some of them, to enable us to reach a correct conclusion upon the question of the admissibility of the evidence offered in the present case. The general rule in regard to the declarations of a person, since deceased, was conceded; and it is this, to render them ²⁸³ admissible against third persons, “it must appear that the declarant is deceased; that he possessed competent knowledge of the facts, or that it was his duty to know them; and that the declarations were at variance with his interest.” 1 Greenleaf Ev., sec. 147. The first and second requirements are fully established in this case, but was the declaration against or at variance with the interest of the declarant? All the authorities concur that this interest must be a pecuniary one, and it is equally certain that such an interest must be made to appear affirmatively.

How the declaration offered was against the interest of Mathias we have been unable to discover. It did not create a debt or establish any liability on his part to pay a sum of money to any person or body corporate. It did not furnish any ground, or pretext even, upon which lie might have been sued or proceeded against either in law or equity. He paid the money, spoken of, to the treasurer for the