ernment to prevent her from carrying her belief into practice? So here, as the law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances. A criminal intent is generally an element of crime, but every man is presumed to intend the necessary and legitimate consequences of what he knowingly does. Here the accused knew that he had been once married and that his first wife was living. He also knew that his second marriage was forbidden by law. When, therefore he married a second time, he is presumed to have intended to break the law. And the breaking of the law is the crime. Every act necessary to constitute the crime was knowingly done and the crime was therefore knowingly committed. Ignorance of fact may sometimes be taken as evidence of want of criminal intent, but not ignorance of the law. The only defense of the accused in this case is his belief that the law ought not to have been enacted. It matters not that his belief was a part of his professed religion. It was still belief, and belief only" (2).

SECTION 2. KINDS OF INTENT.

§ 29. General statement. From what has been said we may conclude that while criminal intent is a state of mind

(2) Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145.

of the criminal at the time the crime is committed and essential to criminality in the particular case, that intent must be carefully distinguished from the motive which induces him to do the act, or the belief in its righteousness or wicked character; and that this intent varies so much in the different crimes that no more precise and definite statement can be made as to what particular intent must exist in general. Nevertheless a review of all the crimes on the calendar will show that criminal intent in every case consists of one or the other of the following states of mind:

1. A direct intent to do the act which the law has declared to be a crime. 2. An intent to do some other criminal act from the doing of which the crime charged resulted as a natural consequence, though perhaps not foreseen. 3. A criminal neglect of duty, by reckless misfeasance, or negligent omission, from which neglect the criminal act resulted as a natural consequence. 4. The case is one of that large class in which the legislature has felt that the difficulty of proving an actual intention and the danger to the public from allowing guilty persons to escape whose guilty intention could not be proved was so great that the act has been declared criminal by statute regardless of any intention to commit it-in other words, the citizen in cases of this kind acts at his peril.

In addition to the various intents above expressed, which are commonly designated as general criminal intent, there are certain crimes in which an essential element of the crime is the object designed to be accomplished by doing the act; in other words, the crime con

sists, not of the act intentionally done, as is the case in most crimes, but consists of these three elements: 1. The act. 2. The intent to do it. 3. The purpose to be accomplished by doing it. For example, the crime of assault with intent to kill consists of three elements-The act of assaulting, the intent to assault, and the design to kill by doing so. In like manner burglary consists of three elements: The act of breaking in, intentionally done, for the purpose of committing a felony in the building when it has been entered. Now let us look at each of these various kinds of intent separately.

§ 30. Direct general intent. This is the common case of criminal intent, namely, the intention to do the act done. That this intention accompanying an act criminal in its nature suffices to constitute a crime, is so plain that further discussion of it is unnecessary.

§ 31. Intent to do some other crime. It is so just and necessary for the public protection that one designing to commit a particular crime and in the attempt accidentally committing some other crime which he did not intend, should be punished, that it has long been an established doctrine of the law that everyone is liable criminally, not only for what he actually intended but for all its natural and direct consequences, whether foreseen or not. This intent is called constructive intent. The intent to do the one crime is constructively accepted as an equivalent for the wrong unintentionally resulting. This point is well illustrated by an old case.

Roper's daughter Agnes married Gore; Gore became sick; Roper went to Dr. Gray for advice, who gave him a

prescription to apothecary Martin, who prepared it as ordered with one change, for want of that ingredient; Agnes secretly added ratsbane to it to kill her husband, and gave him part of it, on which he became very sick; Roper took some, and also became sick immediately; next day C took some and likewise became sick; but they all recovered. Observing these results Roper took it to Dr. Gray complaining; who sent for Martin to explain; who said it was as ordered with one change, which Doctor Gray approved; then Martin said: "To the end you may know that I have not put anything in it which I myself will not eat, I will before you eat part of it:" and thereupon he took the box, stirred it with his knife, took some of it, and next day died. The question was on all this matter whether Agnes had committed murder. The case was delivered to all the judges of England for their opinion. The doubt was because Martin himself, of his own motion, not only ate of it, but stirred it and so incorporated the poison that it was more forcible than as Agnes made it; for those who ate before lived, but Martin's mixture was fatal. It was resolved by all the judges that Agnes was guilty of the murder of Martin; for the law conjoins the murderous intent of Agnes in putting the poison into the electuary to kill her husband with the event which thence ensued-the death of Martin. For the putting of the poison into the electuary was the occasion and cause, and the poisoning and death of Martin the result, and without the poison put in by Agnes, the death would not have been caused by Martin stirring it (3).

(3) Gore's Case, 9 Coke's Rep. 81a.

§ 32. Malum prohibitum or tort intended. If the act which the defendant intended to do is not in itself wicked nor harmful, but is criminal merely because the law has forbidden it to be done; for example, to drive on the street faster than a certain pace, or to store gunpowder at a certain place in the city, the intention to violate this statutory provision is not such a criminal intent as will by con struction supply the lack of intent to do some act which accidentally results from it, so as to make this other act a crime. For example if a man were driving on the streets at a pace faster than the law permits, and by reason of driving at this pace, should run over and kill some person, he would not be liable for manslaughter unless the act he did was so reckless that a person of ordinary caution could see that it was dangerous. The mere fact that the act is prohibited is not enough to make the doing of that act supply the lack of intention to do the other act which accidentally results from it.

The statute of 9 and 10 William III, c. 7, prohibited the manufacture of fireworks and storage of explosives in certain parts of the city. The defendant kept gunpowder in his building in violation of this statute, and by the negligence of his servants the explosives were ignited, the house burned, and a man in the house thereby killed. It was held that the mere keeping of the fireworks in violation of the statute was not sufficient to make the defendant liable for manslaughter, the prohibited act not being such that a reasonable man could see that the result that occurred might naturally flow from it (4).

(4) Queen v. Bennett, 8 Cox Cr. Case 74.