The defendant was indicted in the circuit court of the United States for the Southern district of New York for an alleged offense set out in the first count of the indictment, the other three being substan tially similar, as follows:
'The jurors of the United States of America within and for the district and circuit aforesaid, on their oaths, present that Morris Spiegel, late of the city and county of New York, in the district and circuit aforesaid, yeoman, heretofore, to-wit, on the eighteenth day of April, in the year of our Lord 1883, at the Southern district of New York, and within the jurisdiction of this court, did feloniously, knowingly, and fraudulently have in his possession a certain United States stamp of the kind and description provided and required by law to be affixed to packages containing distilled spirits imported into the United States in packages, the said stamp being then and there in form as prescribed by the secretary of the treasury, and numbered in figures as follows: '350,460,' a more particular description of which said stamp is to the jurors as yet unknown, which said stamp had been heretofore removed from a certain package which had contained imported spirits, to-wit, brandy, and which said stamp had not been defaced and destroyed at the time of such removal, then and there against the peace of the United States and their dignity, and contrary to the form of the statute of the United States in such case made and provided.'