PRINCIPALS AND ACCESSORIES.

Having described what persons are or are not capable of committing crime, let us now examine the different degrees of guilt among persons that are capable of offending.

Explain the Degrees of Guilt in Criminals, first as "Principal," then as "Accessory," and the Punishment.

A man may be principal in an offence in either of two degrees. A principal, in the first degree, is he that is the actor or absolute perpetrator of the crime; and he who is present, aiding and abetting the fact to be done, is in the second degree, which presence need not always be an actual standing by, within sight or hearing of the fact; but there may be also a constructive presence, as when one commits a robbery or murder, and another keeps watch or guard at some distance. In the case of rape, a person present aiding and abetting may be charged as principal either in the first or second degree. In murder by poisoning, a man may be a principal felon by preparing and laying the poison, or persuading another to drink it who is ignorant of its poisonous quality; or giving it to him for that purpose, and yet not administer it himself, nor be present when the very deed of poisoning is committed. And the same reasoning will hold, with regard to other murders committed in the absence of the murderer, by means which he had prepared beforehand, and which probably could not fail of their mischievous effect.

In general the punishment inflicted upon either class of offenders in the first and second degree is the same.

* See Accessories and Abettors Act (1861), 24 & 25 Vict., c. 94.

An Accessory is he who is not the chief actor in the offence, nor present at its performance, but is in some way concerned therein, either before or after the fact committed.

In high treason there are no accessories, but all are principals; the same acts that make a man accessory in felony, make him a principal in high treason, upon account of the heinousness of the crime. Besides it is to be considered, that the bare intent to commit treason is many times actual treason; as imagining the death of the Sovereign, or conspiring to take away the Crown. And, as no one can advise and abet such a crime without an intention to have it done, there can be no accessories before the fact; since the very advice and abetment amount to treason.

In murder and other felonies there may be accessories; except only in those offences which by judgment of law are sudden and unpremeditated, as manslaughter, chance-medley, and the like; which therefore cannot have any accessories before the fact. So, too, in crimes under the degree of felony; there are no accessories either before or after the fact, for all persons concerned therein, if guilty at all, are principals.

An accessory before the fact is one who, being absent at the time of the crime committed, doth yet procure, counsel, or command another to commit a crime. Herein absence is necessary to make him an accessory; for if such procurer, or the like, be present, he is guilty of the crime as principal. If A., then, advises B. to kill another, and B. does it in the absence of A., then B. is principal, and A. is accessory in the murder; and now, by statutes 24 & 25 Vict., c. 94, an accessory before the fact may be indicted, tried, convicted, and punished as if he were a principal felon.

An accessory after the fact may be where a person, knowing a felony to have been committed, receives, relieves, comforts, or assists the felon. Therefore, to make an accessory ex post facto, it is in the first place requisite that he knows of the felony committed, and the felony must be complete at the time of the assistance given; for if a man wounds another mortally, and after the wound given, but before death ensues, a person assists or receives the delinquent, this does not make him accessory to the homicide, for till death ensues there is no felony com

mitted. But so stringent is the law to attain the ends of justice where a felony is complete, that the nearest relations are not suffered to aid or receive one another: if a parent receives his son, or a husband his wife, the receiver becomes an accessory ex post facto. A feme-covert cannot become an accessory by receiving or concealing her husband; for she is presumed to act under his coercion, and "she is not bound to discover her lord." Generally, any assistance whatever given to a felon, to hinder his being apprehended, tried, or suffering punishment, makes the assistor an accessory, and the statute enacts that every accessory after the fact shall be liable to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.

As to accessories generally; if any principal offender be convicted of felony, it shall be lawful to proceed against any accessory, either before or after the fact, in the same manner as if such principal felon had been attainted thereof, notwithstanding the principal felon dies, or is pardoned; and every such accessory shall, upon conviction, suffer the same punishment as he would have suffered if the principal had been attainted.*

* See 24 & 25 Vict., c. 94, s. 5.

CHAPTER III.

OFFENCES PUNISHABLE BY THE MUNICIPAL LAW.

Let us now inquire into the several crimes and misdemeanors, which are either directly, or by consequence, injurious to civil society, and therefore punishable by the laws of England, with the punishments annexed to each. These offences may be distributed under the following general heads:-1. Those which are more immediately injurious to religion. -2. Such as violate and transgress the law of nations.-3. Such as more especially affect the Sovereign and the Government.-4. Such as more directly infringe the rights of the public or commonwealth.-5. Such as derogate from those rights and duties which are owing to particular individuals, and in the preservation and vindication of which the community is deeply interested.

First, then, Explain those Offences that transgress against Religion, with the Punishment.

Of this species, the first is that of APOSTASY, or a total renunciation of Christianity, by embracing either a false religion or no religion at all. For a long time the offence of apostasy was cognizable only by the ecclesiastical courts, which corrected the offender pro salute animæ; but about the close of the seventeenth century the civil liberties to which we were then restored being used as a cloak of maliciousness, and doctrines subversive of all religion being publicly avowed both in discourses and writings, it was thought necessary for the civil power to interpose by not admitting those mescroyans to the privileges of society who maintained

such principles as destroyed all moral obligation. To this end it was enacted by stat. 9 & 10 Wm. III., e. 32, that if any person educated in, or having made profession of the Christian religion, shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advisedly speaking, deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of Divine origin, he shall upon the first offence be rendered incapable to hold any office or place of trust; and, for the second offence, be rendered incapable of bringing any action, or of being guardian, executor, legatee, or donee, and shall suffer three years' imprisonment without bail. To give room, however, for repentance, if, within four months after the first conviction, the delinquent will in open court publicly renounce his error, he is discharged from all disabilities. Prosecutions for offences of this nature have now become practically extinct.

II. HERESY, which consists, not in a total denial of Christianity, but in a denial of some of its principal doctrines, publicly and obstinately avowed, is no longer cognizable by courts temporal.* The Tests and Corporation Acts were repealed by the stat. of 9 Geo. IV., c. 17, which has been supplemented by various very liberal enactments-9 & 10 Vict., c. 59; and 29 & 30 Vict., c. 22, passed to prevent the exclusion from corporate and other offices of Protestant Nonconformists on the ground of their religious convictions. An Act has also been recently passed, 34 & 35 Vict., c. 26, to alter the law respecting religious tests in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, and in the Halls and Colleges of those Universities.

III. BLASPHEMY against the Almighty, or jestingly or profanely scoffing at the Holy Scriptures, is punishable at common law by fine and imprisonment, or corporal punishment; for Christianity forms part of the laws of England.

IV. RELIGIOUS IMPOSTORS, or persons who pretend an extraordinary commission from Heaven, or terrify the ignorant with false denunciations of judgments, are punishable by fine and imprisonment. འནངང་

*For writ De hæretico comburendo, and the sanguinary penal enactments that were formerly in force against heretics, see "Blackstone," vol. IV., chap. 5.