Acts made piracy by statute.

Punishment of piracy.

mitted, viz., the high seas, and within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty (9).

Piracy by Statute.-By particular statutes certain acts are made piracy. Such are the following:

For any natural-born subject to commit an act of hostility upon the high seas against another of Her Majesty's subjects under colour of a commission from a foreign power (h), or, in time of war, to assist an enemy on the sea (i).

For any commander, master of a ship, or any seaman or marine, to run away with the ship or cargo, or to yield them up voluntarily to any pirate; or to consult or endeavour to corrupt any such person to the commission of such acts; or to bring any seducing message from any pirate, enemy, or rebel; or to put force upon the commander so that he cannot fight; or to make, or endeavour to make, a revolt in the ship (k).

For any person to have dealings with, or render any assistance to, a pirate (1).

For any person to board a merchant ship and throw overboard or destroy any of the ship's goods (m).

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 (n).

(g) As to the jurisdiction of the Admiralty, v. Archbold's Crim. Cases, 466, and post, p. 305.

(h) 11 & 12 Wm. 3, c. 7, s. 8, made perpetual by 6 Geo. I, c. 19. (i) 18 Geo. 2, c. 30.

(k) 11 & 12 Wm. 3, c. 7, 8. 9.

(1) 8 Geo. I, c. 24, s. 1, perpetual by 2 Geo. 2, c. 28.

(m) Ibid.

(n) 7 Wm. 4 & 1 Vict. c. 88, ss. 2, 3.

OFFENCES AS TO SLAVES.

This class of offences is connected with the last, Slave trade. inasmuch as the first and chief crime which we shall notice is declared to be piracy, felony, and robberyviz., for any British subject, or person within British territory, to convey away, or assist in conveying away, any person on the high seas as slaves, or ship them for such purpose (o). The punishment formerly was death, but now it is penal servitude to the extent of life, or imprisonment not exceeding three years (p).

Dealing in slaves and certain other offences are made felonies. And it is a misdemeanor for a seaman to serve on board a ship engaged in the slave trade (9).

A recent statute consolidates the law on the subject of trading in slaves; but it preserves the provisions noticed above (r).

It will not be necessary to discuss any of the more obscure offences against the law of nations (s).

(0) 5 Geo. 4, c. 113, s. 9.

(p) 7 Wm. 4 & 1 Vict. c. 91, s. I.

(9) 5 Geo. 4, c. 113, 88. 10, II.

(r) 36 & 37 Vict. c. 88. v. R. v. Zulueta, 1 C. & K. 215.

(8) As to the Violation of Safe Conducts and Passports, v. 4 St. Bl. 217. Violation of the Rights of Ambassadors, 4 St. Bl. 219; 1 Russ. 960.

CHAPTER II.

Moral view of treason.

OFFENCES AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT AND SOVEREIGN.

We now have to deal with offences committed by members of the community in violation of their duties as subjects; these offences 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 (†).

The ordinary popular conception of treason, or, what is the same thing, the offence 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 favourable view of the offence, 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.

(t) 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 offence which would previously have amounted to petit treason is now regarded simply as murder (9 Geo. 4, c. 31, s. 2), therefore there is no longer any reason for distinguishing the graver offence by the epithet "high."

(u) Fitz. St. 36.

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

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

2. Acts of treachery against the state in favour 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.

of treasonable acts.

the law of

In order to ascertain what constitutes treason, it will History of be necessary to glance at the early history of the crime. treason. 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 constructed into treason, though it lacked the essentials of that crime. Thus we are told (y) 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 offences with which it deals.

Treason is committed "when a man doth compass or 25 Edw. 3. imagine the death of our lord the king, or of our lady

(x) Fitz. St. 113.

(y) Mirror, c. i. s. 4.

(2) 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.

Change in the gist of the crime.

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 therefore be probably (or proveably, 'probablement') attainted of open deed by people of their condition." So much for the political or quasipolitical offences 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 merchandize 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 offence 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 towards the subverting of the constitution.