amounted to felony there.(b) Each state is entitled to visit the crime with the penalties which its own laws may determine. (c) In England, formerly the proper courts for the trial of piracy were the admiralty courts; but, later, the trial was by commissioners, nominated by the lord chancellor, in whose number were always found some common-law judges. (d) Now, the judges sitting at the central criminal court and at the assizes are empowered to try cases of piracy.(e)

The robbery must be proved as in ordinary cases of that crime committed on land. The taking must be without authority from any prince or state, for a nation can not be deemed guilty of piracy. If the subjects of the same state commit robbery upon each other it is piracy. If the injurer and the injured be of different states the nature of the act will depend on the relation of those states. If in amity it is piracy; if at enmity it is not, for it is a general rule that enemies can never commit piracy on each other, their depredations being deemed mere acts of hostility.(f)

The gist of the offense is the place where it is committed, viz, the high seas, and within the jurisdiction of the ad. miralty.(g)

() 1 Russ. 144. v. Trial of Joseph Dawson and others, 13 Howell's State Trials (1696), 456.

(e) v. Manning's Law of Nations, by Amos, 121. The crime has been thus defined by text writers on international law: The offense of depredating on the seas without being authorized by any sovereign state, or with commissions from different sovereigns at war with each other."―(Lawrence's Wheaton's Elements of International law, 1863, p. 246.) The definition is framed to exclude depredations by lawfully authorized privateers, etc.

(d) 28 Hen. 8, c. 15.

(e) 4 and 5 Wm. 4, c. 36, 8 22; 7 and 8 Vict., c. 2, ¿ 1.

(f) v. In re Tivnan, 5 B. & S. 645; 2 Sir L. Jenk. 790; 1 Sir L. Jenk. 94.

It should be remembered that the declaration of Paris (1856) contained a provision that privateering should be abolished, binding on the countries parties to that declaration-Russia, Turkey, England, France, Italy, Austria, and Prussia.

(g) As to the jurisdiction of the Admiralty, v. Archbold's Crim Cases, 452.

[Piracy by Statute.-Every person who, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations; every seaman who lays violent hands upon his commander thereby to hinder and prevent his fighting in defense of his vessel or the goods intrusted to him; every person who, upon the high seas, or in any open roadstead, or in any haven, basin, or bay, or in any river where the sea ebbs and flows, commits the crime of robbery upon any vessel upon any ship's company or lading; every person engaged in any piratical cruise or enterprise, or being of the crew of any piratical vessel, who lands from such vessel, and on shore commits robbery; every person who commits on the high seas, or in any river, harbor, basin, or bay, out of the jurisdiction of any particular state, murder or robbery, or any other offense which, if committed within the body of a county, would be punished with death by the laws of the United States; every citizen who commits any murder or robbery, or any act of hostility against the United States, or against any citizen thereof on the high seas, under color of any commission from any foreign prince or state, or on pretense of authority from any person; every subject or citizen of any foreign state, who is found and taken on the sea making war upon the United States, or cruising against the vessels and property thereof, or of the citizens of the same, contrary to provisions of any treaty, when by such treaty such acts are declared piracy,— is guilty of piracy, and shall suffer death.(1) Piracy is prosecuted in the circuit courts of the United States, or in a district court when no circuit court is held in the district of such court.]

The punishment for piracy was formerly death. Now the offender is liable to penal servitude to the extent of life, or to imprisonment not exceeding three years. But piracy accompanied with an assault with intent to murder, or with wounding or endangering the life of any person on board of, or belonging to, the vessel, is still punishable with death.(m)

(1) U. S. Rev. Stat., 22 5368-5374, and 8 563.
(m) 7 Wm. 4, and 1 Vict., c. 8, 2% 2. 3.

CHAPTER II.

OFFENSES AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT AND SOVEREIGN.

We now have to deal with offenses committed by members of the community in violation of their duties as subjects; these offenses for the most part also incidentally causing injury to individuals. The full treatment which the gravity of this class of crimes would demand is happily in many cases rendered unnecessary by the rarity of their occurrence. This is especially true of the crime of

treason.

TREASON.(t)

The ordinary popular conception of treason, or, what is the same thing, the offense of a traitor, is something of this sort, "armed resistance, justified on principle, to the established law of the land." (u) This is the most favorable view of the offense, the notion of "principle" obscuring its gravity. But the true conception of the crime includes acts which will be admitted on all hands to be highly morally heinous, far removed from justifiable and conscientious efforts for revolution.

The crime comprises the three following classes of acts:(x)

"1. Execution or contrivance of acts of violence against the person of the sovereign.

(1) Treason against the government was termed "high" treason to distinguish it from "petit" treason, which consisted in the murder of a superior by an inferior in natural, civil, or spiritual relation; "and therefore for a wife to kill her lord or husband, a servant his lord or master, and an ecclesiastic his lord or ordinary; these, being breaches of the lower allegiance of private and domestic faith, are denominated "petit treason."-(4 Bl. 75.) But every offense which would previously have amounted to petit treason, is now regarded simply as murder (9 Geo. 4, c. 31, & 2), therefore there is no longer any reason for distin guishing the graver offense by the epithet "high." (x) Fitz. St. 113.

(u) Fitz. St. 36.

Scowgones.

"2. Acts of treachery against the state in favor of a foreign enemy.

"3. Acts of violence against the internal government of the country."

In addition to these branches, the law includes a few acts which are of the rarest occurrence, and at the present day hardly demand any notice.

In order to ascertain what constitutes treason, it will be necessary to glance at the early history of the crime. For a long period there was great vagueness and uncertainty as to what acts were treasonable, the consequence being that any deed which appeared to infringe the royal rights or to interfere with the royal authority was construed into treason, though it lacked the essentials of that crime. Thus we are told(1) that unlawfully taking the royal venison, fish, or goods, had the effect of making the taker a traitor. To remedy this evil, and to provide certainty in a matter of so great moment, an act was passed in the reign of Edward III. (2) It will be well to give the actual words of the statute, and then to consider individually the offenses with which it deals.

Treason is committed "when a man doth compass or imagine the death of our lord the king, or of our lady his queen, or of their eldest son and heir; or if a man do violate the king's companion, or the king's eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of the king's eldest son and heir; or if a man do levy war against our lord the king in his realm, or be adherent to the king's enemies in his realm, giving them aid or comfort in our realm or elsewhere, and thereof be probably (or provably, provablement') attainted of open deed by people of their condition."

(y) Mirror, c. 1, 8 4.

(z) 25 Edw. 3, st. 5, c. 2. "This statute is memorable, not only on account of its vast direct importance at many periods of our history, but also because it is almost the only instance which the statute book affords of a statutory definition of a crime, laid down in such a manner as to supersede the whole common law or unwritten doctrine on the subject."-Fitz. St. 36.

So much for the political or quasi-political offenses provided against; the statute proceeds to define certain other acts of treason: "And if a man counterfeit the king's great or privy seal, or his money; and if a man bring false money into this realm, counterfeit to the money of England, as the money called Lushburg, or other like to the said money of England, knowing the money to be false, to merchandise or make payment, in deceit of our said lord the king and his people; and if a man slea the chancellor, treasurer, or the king's justices of the one bench, or the other justices in eyre, or justices of assize, and all other justices assigned to hear and determine being in their places, doing their offices." It is also provided that the judges shall not give judgment in any case which is supposed to be treason till it has been determined by the king and parliament whether it ought to be treason or felony.

As he glances through the acts here enumerated, the reader will not fail to notice that treason was regarded as an offense rather against the person of the king than against the state. But in later times, with an altered state of circumstances, when the person of the king comparatively had been lost sight of in the consideration of the interests of the public, though the letter of the old law was preserved, by liberal construction it had been adapted to the new state of affairs. For example, levying war against the king was construed to include almost any act which was calculated to tend toward the subverting of the constitution.

(a.) Compassing or imagining the death of the king, queen, or eldest son and heir.-Here the "king" is to be understood to mean the king de facto, though he be not the king de jure. On the other hand, the person rightfully entitled to the crown, if not in possession, is not within the statute. The "queen" referred to is the queen consort, the queen regnant being included in the term "king." But against the husband of the queen regnant, treason can not be committed.

It is the designing that constitutes the offense. But this design must be evidenced by some overt act, so that if