Attempt to commit a felony or a misdemeanor Bare intention to commit a crime not punishable p. 1. p. 1. p. 2. INDICTABLE offences are those punishable by means of an indictment; they are either treasons, felonies, or misdemeanors. Of treason we do not here treat. CHAP. I. A felony was defined to be “an offence which occasions Definition a total forfeiture of either lands or goods or both, at the of felony. common law, and to which capital or other punishment may be superadded according to the degree of guilt." (4 Bl. C. 94.) This forfeiture, as will be seen hereafter, is now abolished. Felonies are often created by statute either by express words or necessary implication. When a statute makes an offence a felony, all the ordinary consequences attending a felony follow. Misdemeanors comprehend all indictable offences which What are do not amount to a felony. In general wherever a statute misdeprohibits a matter of public grievance, or commands a meanors. matter of public convenience, as the repairing of the common streets of a town, an offender against such a statute is punishable by way of indictment for his contempt of the statute, unless such method of proceeding manifestly B PART I. appear to be excluded from it. (2 Hawk. P. C. c. 25, s. 4.) In general where a statute making a new offence oniy inflicts a forfeiture and specifies a remedy, not being by indictment, an indictment will not lie. (R. v. Wright, 1 Burr. 543.) A mere act of trespass committed by one person unaccompanied by any circumstances constituting a breach of the peace is not indictable, nor will an indictment lie for a mere private injury against an individual as for enticing away his apprentice. Incontinence. Many offences of the incontinent kind are to be considered as sins only, and are not indictable; they are left to the consciences of the offenders or to the ecclesiastical court who punish by censure or imposing penance pro salute anima et reformatione morum. Thus adultery is not an indictable offence. Adultery by the English law is the violation of conjugal fidelity by either husband or wife. By an Act passed on the 10th of May, 1650, in the time of the Commonwealth, it was enacted that in case any married woman be carnally known by any man, other than her husband, except in case of ravishment, such offence shall be felony, and every person, as well the man as the woman, offending therein shall suffer death as in the case of felony, without benefit of clergy; but this did not extend to any man who at the time of such offence committed did not know that such woman was married, and it did not "extend to any woman whose husband shall be continually remaining beyond the seas by the space of three years, or shall by common fame reported to be dead; nor to any woman whose husband shall absent himself from his said wife by the space of three years together, in any parts or place whatsoever, so as the said wife shall not know her said husband to be living within that time." And by the above Act fornication was punishable with three months' imprisonment, and the offenders had to give security to be of good behaviour for the space of one year. Both the man and the woman were liable to the above punishment. (Scobell's Acts and Orders, p. 121.) The above provisions have not been re-enacted since the Commonwealth. By the Indian Penal Code, s. 197, whoever has sexual intercourse, not amounting to the offence of rape, with a person who is, and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be, the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, is guilty of the offence of adultery, and may be punished with imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for not more than 5 years, or with fine, or with both. In such case the wife shall not be punishable as an abettor. |