capacity; persons over the age of fourteen are presumed to be capable. Aside from these natural infirmities of idiocy, lunacy and infancy, persons whose powers have become enfeebled by disease, drunkenness or any cause, to such an extent that they have lost the control of their wills and are unable to know right from wrong or to understand the nature of the act, are not criminally. responsible in some jurisdictions although they may be liable in a civil action for the wrongs they may inflict upon others.

§ 244. Criminal statutes, how construed.-Criminal statutes are construed liberally in favor of the accused. It matters not how immoral an act may be, or how injurious to society, it can not be punished as a crime unless it is prohibited by law.

§ 245. Infamous crimes.-Infamous crimes are held by the federal courts to be such as are punished by imprisonment at hard labor. The state statutes declaring what are and what are not infamous crimes are not harmonious.

§ 246. Crimes classified.-Crimes are again divided into felonies and misdemeanors, felonies being such offenses as are punishable with death or imprisonment in the state prison, and misdemeanors being offenses of a lower grade, for which lighter punishments are prescribed. There are the usual statutory provisions. At common law the test of felony was the forfeiture of the goods.

§ 247. Compounding.-Compounding an offense is where one for a consideration agrees not to prosecute the offender or to stop a prosecution already begun.

§ 248. Attempts.-Attempts to commit crime are sometimes declared to be crimes themselves. A mere naked purpose to commit a crime, however, unaccompanied by an act in furtherance of the purpose, is not punishable as an attempt. The criminal law deals only with overt acts. It sometimes happens that a man with deliberate purpose attempts to commit a crime which for some cause unknown to him he can not commit, as to pick a pocket which is empty, or to shoot at another with an unloaded gun. In such cases he is generally held criminally responsible.

§ 249. Aiding, counseling, etc.-Advising, counseling, encouraging or soliciting another to commit a crime is a punishable offense, but of this more will be said when we come to speak of accessories.

§ 250. Unlawful intent and overt act must unite. -In every crime at the common law there must be a union of the unlawful intent and the overt act, and both act and intent must be proved. This is not true, however, in the case of many statutory offenses, such as violating the speed limit. In most cases the intent is inferred from the act itself, or it may be proved by circumstantial evidence. There is much confusion in the decisions of the courts of the various states as to the character of the overt act necessary to constitute the offense. Thrusting. the hand into an empty pocket with intent to steal has been declared by some courts to be an attempt to commit larceny, and the contrary is held by other courts. So of shooting at another with a blank cartridge. Bishop says, as we think correctly, after carefully examining the conflicting decisions, "on the whole we may deem the true doctrine to be that where the object is not accomplished, simply because of obstructions in the way, or because of

the want of the thing to be operated upon, where the impediment is of a nature to be wholly unknown to the offender, who used appropriate means, the criminal attempt is committed."

§ 251. Criminal carelessness.-Where through the wanton and reckless or grossly negligent conduct of one an accident happens which causes death, the act is criminal, as where an engineer in charge of a locomotive neglects his duty, or one on a building throws missiles from a house into a public street where persons are passing.

§ 252. Ignorance or mistake of fact.-Ignorance or mistake of fact will sometimes deprive an unlawful act of its criminal character, as where one takes the property of another supposing it to be his own, or obstructs a highway without knowing it to be a highway, but where a statute makes an act unlawful irrespective of guilty knowledge, ignorance or mistake is no defense.

§ 253. Ignorance of law.-Ignorance of law is no excuse for the commission of a crime, even where the statute making the act criminal has been enacted so recently as to make it impossible that the accused should have known of its existence. Such ignorance would go far to mitigate the punishment, and would give good grounds for an appeal to the pardoning power in cases of conviction.

§ 254. Self-defense.-Self-defense is a right which may be asserted by any person, where he is in apparently imminent danger of suffering either loss of life or limb or great bodily harm. If the conduct of the assailant is such as to produce in the mind of a reasonable person a belief that such harm is intended, the person assailed

may defend himself even to the point of killing his assailant, though the danger was not real but only apparent. The right of self-defense, but not to the point of taking life, also exists where the impending danger is not so serious.

§ 255. Offenses committed by wife.-An offense committed by the wife in the presence of the husband is prima facie done by his coercion, though this presumption may be overcome by evidence showing that she acted upon her own independent volition, and in such a case she and she alone is criminally responsible.

§ 256. Where principal liable criminally for offense of agent.-A principal is not liable for the criminal acts done by his agent unless the agent is acting under orders from the principal. The same rule applies to master and servant. Where an agent or servant is put in charge of a business, such as publishing a newspaper or keeping a saloon, and a criminal libel is published in the paper or liquor is unlawfully sold in the saloon, the owner of the paper or the proprietor of the saloon may be punished criminally for the act of the agent or servant.

§ 257. Principal and accessories.-In the commission of crimes there may be principals and accessories. To constitute one a principal he must be actually or constructively present when the crime is committed, as where one does the act, and another stands near by to give assistance or give warning of the approach of the officers. In such case both are principals.

An accessory before the fact is one who is not the chief actor in the commission of a crime, nor near enough at the time to give assistance, but procures, counsels or commands another to commit it. An accessory after the

fact is one who, knowing that a crime has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the criminal.

§ 258. Drunkenness.-Voluntary drunkenness will not excuse crime. Where, as a result of habitual drunkenness, one becomes permanently diseased to the extent that he has lost his will power and is incapable of knowing right from wrong, he is incapable of com-. mitting crime. Some courts have held that voluntary drunkenness aggravates a crime, but the better opinion is now to the contrary. Drunkenness of the accused at the time of the commission of the offense may be given in evidence to show want of malice, premeditation or intent.

§ 259. Insanity.-Insanity, where it is such as to prevent the accused from distinguishing right from wrong, or appreciating the nature of his act, will relieve him of criminal responsibility, and if from all the facts in the case the jury have a reasonable doubt as to the sanity of the accused they should acquit.

§ 260. Punishment.-Punishment is inflicted for the public good. The same act may be punishable as a crime and be a wrong to the individual citizen, in which case the punishment of the crime does not prevent the citizen from seeking redress in a civil action for the damage done to him personally. The individual who suffers in such a case may compromise with the offender and waive his right to redress, but this is no bar to a prosecution of the offender by the state.

The object of punishment is to prevent crime, and this is effected by imposing pecuniary fines and by placing the offender under restraint for a given period of time, with the double view of reforming the prisoner and deterring others from committing like offenses, and in cases of