delivered the opinion of the Court.
In an indictment returned by the grand jurors for Carroll County on May 17th, 1928, C. Arnold Fleming was charged with the crime of bastardy. "Five days later he pleaded not guilty and elected to be tried before the court, sitting as a jury, by whose verdict he was found guilty, and under an applicable provision of section 5 of article 12 of the Code (as amended by Laws of 1927, ch. 458) the court gave judgment and sentence that the traverser give bond to the State in the sum of $300, with sureties, conditioned to pay to the mother of the bastard child, for her support and maintenance until she should reach the age of fourteen years, or during the life of the child should she die before reaching that age, the sum of ten dollars per month, accounting from the date of convictiоn, and further to pay a certain sum as expenses of the mother incident to confinement, likewise to pay the reasonable funeral еxpenses of the infant should she die before attaining the age of fourteen years, and in default of such bond the traverser was committed to thе house of correction until it was given, not exceeding two years. Subsequently he was recognized with two other persons as sureties, who shortly thereafter filed a petition to be relieved of the obligation upon the ground *194 that they had no intention of becoming sureties for the undertaking in questiоn, and their bond was, after hearing on September 12th, 1928, found by the court to be null and void because of fraud, and accordingly vacated. The travеrser was thereupon resentenced by the court in form and manner identical with the original sentence, and on the same date executed a bond as contemplated by the sentence with George A. Fleming and George W. Gosnell as sureties. These sureties, by reason of financial reverses, have at the suits of creditors been divested of their property and are no longer adequate security for the ¡undertaking which- they entered into, and the female bastard child is still living, but Fleming, her father, is in default in payments to the mother. These facts were made the basis of a petitiоn filed by the State on behalf of the mother, asking that the court pass an order vacating the recognizance of Fleming and Gosnell, and require Fleming to give new sureties to comply with the original order of the court. After hearing, the court passed an order declining to require a new rеcognizance to be given, assigning -as a reason a lack of jurisdiction, and this action presents the only exception contained in -the record.
It thus appears that no dispute arises .as to the facts, but a question of law is presented as to whether, ¡under these facts, the сourt may, under section 5 of article 12 of the Code (as amended by Laws 1927, ch. 458) require appellee to give a second bond with adequatе sureties, and the answer must depend upon a construction of the statute. The present section, as well as those which it amended, has never been construed by this court. A consideration of -the decision in
Oldham v. State,
' From a consideration of that provision, it is manifest that the Legislature contemplatеd only that the traverser should give one bond to the State in an amount not exceeding $500. It may well be that, in order to provide against the time when thе sureties might become insolvent and render the bond worthless, the Legislature could have well provided that the bond in question should always be an adequate bond, but in our judgment it has not so provided, either expressly or by implication. The statute is, by its terms, penal and, this being true, it must be construed strictly. 59 C. J. page 1113, sec. 660 (2) ; 25 R. C. L. “Statutes,” secs. 13, 284, and 301.
*196
As said by this court in
Healy v. State,
“ ‘All agreе that the intention of the Legislature must govern in the construction of all statutes. This rule lies at the bottom of all statutory construction. The law, it is true, in its tendеrness for life and liberty, requires that penal statutes shall be strictly construed, by which is meant that courts will not extend the punishment to cases not plainly within thе language used. At the same time such statutes are to be fairly and reasonably construed, and courts will, not by narrow and strained construction exсlude from their operation cases plainly within their scope and meaning. As stated by Sedgwick on Statutory Law, 287, and quoted with approval by Bramwell, B., in Foley v. Fletcher, 28 L. J. Exch. 100: “The more correct version of the doctrine appears to be that statutes of this class are to be fairly construed and faithfully applied according to the intent of the Legislature, without unwarrantable severity on the one hand or equally unjustifiable lenity on the other; in all cases of doubt the courts inclining to mercy.” After all, then, it is the lеgislative intent that must govern in the construction of penal as well as all other statutes.
“Primarily, the intention of the Legislature must be sought in the> words employed to express it. If the meaning of the language used be plain and unambiguous, the Legislature must be understood to intend what is plainly expressed, and nothing then remains but to give the intent effect.” See, also,
Mitchell v. State,
Applying the principles announced in the cited authorities to the facts in this case, we are constrained to hold that the court was not permitted, under the statute in question, by reason of insolvency of his sureties, to vacate thе bond, which appellee had previously .given, and that the court’s criminal jurisdiction contemplated by the act had, by the filing of a bond which at that time was good, *197 been exhausted, but this holding, of course, does not relieve appellee or his sureties from their civil liability under that obligation.
Order affirmed.