— after stating the case: Procedure in actions and proceedings before Justices of the Peace are generally more or less informal and summary. They are favored by every reasonable intendment, and are to be helped by the free exercise of the large powers conferred by the statute *698 {The Code, § 908) upon the Courts where the actions in which they appear may be pending, to amend them as to form or substance, at any time before or after judgment. State v. Smith, 303 N. C., 410, and the cases there cited.
In this case, an affidavit was first made. It and the State warrant, founded and issued upon it, must be taken together. While the criminal charge might be embodied and charged, however informally, in the warrant, it may be charged in the affidavit as well, and each may and will aid the other, there being a reference in the warrant to the affidavit. They together constitute one, and they are constituent parts of the same procedure, and will be sufficient, if the Court can see from the whole that the offence is charged. This will suffice to give the defendant such information as will enable him to make defence, and to plead former acquittal or conviction, in case of a subsequent prosecution. Moreover, if the Court found the charge so made defective in form or substance, it had power, as we have seen, to allow proper amendments to perfect the same.
We are clearly of opinion that the grounds assigned in support of the motion to quash are untenable. The charge was sufficiently made in the affidavit taken in connection with the warrant. It is charged in the affidavit, in substance and effect, that about the time specified therein the defendant, within the county of Orange, and within four miles of Chapel Hill, unlawfully sold to the person named spirituous liquors and received compensation therefor against the peace and dignity of the State. The amendment allowed served to make the charge thus made somewhat more specific as to the distance from Chapel Hill within which the sale of spirituous liquors was made and the price thereof paid. It is certainly sufficient in crimina] actions like this, before a Justice of the peace, to charge that the offence charged was “ contrary to law.” But the sale, as charged, taken in connection with the statute forbidding such sale, *699implies that it was unlawful and criminal. The disjunctive “or” in the affidavit complained of was not material, because, whether the sale was made in Chapel Hill, or within four miles of that place, the offence was complete and the charge sufficient. Obviously, it was not necessary that the affidavit, or warrant, should conclude “against the statute.” (The Code, §§ 1183, 1189.)
Accepting the evidence as true, in no reasonable view of it was it agreed or understood by the prosecuting witness and the defendant that the latter sold and delivered to the former a particular gallon, or any quantity, of whiskey, at the distillery twelve miles distant, and hence, the defendant was not entitled to the special instruction to the jury asked for.
The evidence went strongly to prove an agreemént made within four miles of Chapel Hill on the part of the defendant to sell the. person named in the affidavit spirituous liquor which was not present at the time to be delivered; that afterwards, as contemplated by the parties, it was delivered and paid for within four miles of the place mentioned. This was its fair and only reasonable import, and the instructions given by the Court were correct.
The statute (The Code, § 2646) prohibits the sale of spirituous liquors in Chapel Hill, or within four miles of its corporate limits, and section 2646 makes it a misdemeanor to do so.
Affirmed.