Capital punishment by way of suicide.-Suicide has been in some countries the form in which capital punishment has been carried out, though it is a cruel and barbarous form. Socrates, when condemned for blasphemy, was sentenced to drink poison.1

Gladiatorial contests a kind of suicide.—Another species of compulsory suicide was that of the gladiatorial games at Rome. These were, it is supposed, originated to supply the practice of human sacrifices to appease the manes of the dead, and were defended in later times as a means of sustaining the military spirit by the constant spectacle of courageous death,2 and continued for centuries almost without a protest.3

The Fathers took up high ground on the subject of these brutal pastimes, and denounced them with unsparing poison prepared out of hemlock at the public charge, for the use of those who wished to commit suicide, first giving an account to the senate of six hundred, of the reasons for committing the act.-Montaigne, b. ii. c. 3.

1 In Japan, when an official had violated the law, he was allowed and encouraged to rip up his own body, and make an end of himself. By this act he saved his property from forfeiture, and his family from death along with him.-1 Perry's Japan, 17.

The ancient Ethiopians also made their malefactors commit suicide. -Diod. Sic.; Strabo. They had also a singular law, that their king should despatch himself whenever he received a message from the priests, that the gods required it for the good of the country.— Diod. Sic.

2 Cic. Tusc. lib. ii.; Lecky, Hist. Mor.

3 Human sacrifices were not finally abolished, near Rome, till the time of Gratian.-Lact. Inst. b. i. c. 21. The gladiatorial duels began B.C. 264.-Valer. Max. ii. 4, § 7. There were amphitheatres erected in all the large towns, and the Colosseum held no less than 80,000 spectators. Agrippa built a magnificent theatre at Berytus, where, on one occasion, 14,000 condemned criminals were ordered to fight, and they fought so well that not one survived.―Joseph. Ant. b. xix. c. 7. Julius Cæsar once amused the people with 320 couples. -Dion Cass. b. lxviii. Augustus, however, ordered that not more than 120 men should fight on a single occasion, and that no prætor should give more than two spectacles in a single year.-Dion Cass. b. xlviii. The influence of these bloody encounters pervaded the whole round of Roman life.-Epict. Ench. 32, § 2; Arrian, iii. 15; 2 Lecky, Hist. Mor. Philosophers like Seneca, Plutarch, and Marcus Antoninus, condemned these demoralising and brutal scenes, though Cicero held that, when the gladiators were guilty men, no better discipline against suffering and death can be presented to the eye.-Tusc. Q. ii. 17.

vigour as nothing less than murders; and they were finally suppressed in the fifth century.1

Suicide how far a crime at common law. It seems to have been a doctrine of our common law at an early date, that murder included suicide, and that the latter act was ipso facto a felony.2 Hence forfeiture of goods and chattels was a legal consequence of the act, and as the suicide was his own executioner, the forfeiture accrued on the act, since conviction was rendered impossible. But though trial was superseded, an inquisition by the coroner was held on the body. And yet this doctrine, that murder included suicide, tends to inconsistencies, and cannot be logically acted on. It is self-evident, however, that life is not a species of property, and that the law could never vindicate suicide on the plea, that one is thereby only destroying at pleasure what is one's own. It is in every

view a wrongful act, or at least one without legal excuse. Hence when one person asks another to kill him, the law views it as nothing less than a murder, for one had no right to give such a command, and the other ought to have known the same, and ought not to have acted upon it. In such an event he that is killed is deemed no suicide, but the killer is deemed a murderer.4

Again, two persons sometimes agree to kill each other, and one may in the result be killed and the other not. In this event it may become necessary to ascertain in what position they stand, for it may often be difficult to decide.

1 It was not till A.D. 365, immediately after the convocation of the Council of Nice, that the first Christian emperor issued the first edict in the Roman empire condemnatory of the gladiatorial games.-Cod. Theod. lib. xv. tit. 12, lex 1; 2 Leck. Hist Mor. 37. Their suppression was not effected in the metropolis of the empire till nearly ninety years after Christianity had been the state religion.-2 Leck. Hist. Mor. 39. The last gladiatorial show was celebrated at Rome under Honorius, A.D. 404, in honour of the triumph of Stilicho, when an Asiatic monk named Telemachus rushed into the amphitheatre and attempted to part the combatants. He perished beneath a shower of stones flung by the angry spectators, but his death led to the final abolition of the games.-Theodoret. v. 26. Combats of men with wild beasts continued much later, but were finally condemned at the end of the seventh century by the Council of Trullo.-3 Milman, Hist. of Early Ch. 343; 2 Lecky, Hist. Mor. 40.

2 1 Hale, P. C. 412.

3 R. v Burgess, 1 L. & C. 258. 4 1 Hawk. P. C. c. 27, § 6; R. v Russell, Ry. & M. 356.

whether one who is killed under such circumstances commits suicide, or is murdered by his confederate. This question will mainly turn on whether the person killed by his own order and contrivance contributed in a material degree to his own death, or whether the material part was contributed by his partner.1 Each is considered the murderer of the other, and if the purpose is only partly executed, this is the footing on which the mutual guilt is judged.2

Ancient punishment of suicide.-Plato, though recognising some palliations for suicide, directed that he, who commits suicide from indolence or cowardice, shall be buried ingloriously, and laid alone in an uncultivated place, with no column or name to mark where he lies.3 And Solon, though denying burial to the body, ordered the hand to be cut off and buried by itself. The Roman law did not in any way visit the consequences of suicide on the property or person of the dead. But Domitian ordained, that if an accused person committed suicide, he should be deemed to be condemned.5

An able writer says, that the old pagan legislation on suicide remained unaltered in the Theodosian and Justinian codes, but a Council of Arles in the fifth century having pronounced suicide to be the effect of diabolical inspiration, a Council of Bragnes in the following century ordained that no religious rites should be celebrated at the tomb of the culprit, and that no masses should be said for his soul; and these provisions, which were repeated by later councils, were gradually introduced into the laws of the barbarians and of Charlemagne. St. Lewis originated the custom of confiscating the property of the dead man, and the corpse was soon subjected to gross and various outrages. In

11 Hawk. P. C. c. 27, § 6; Keilw. 136; Moor, 754. Alison, 8 C. & P. 418; R. v Dyson, R. & Ry. 523. Leg. b. ix. 4 Esch. Ctes. 636.

2 R. v

3 Plat. De

5 Gibbon, Decl. and F. c. 44. Josephus says that, in some nations the right hand of the suicide was amputated, and that in Judæa the suicide was only buried after sunset.-De Bell. Jud. iii. 8. In Japan also the suicide was buried like a dog, and those who attempted to commit the crime were exposed three days to disgrace, and then made beggars.-Dickson's Japan, 339. The Indians of Southern America refused mourning for a suicide, and buried the dead body like that of a coward.--Jones, S. Ind. Ant. 113.

some countries it could only be removed from the house through a perforation specially made for the occasion in the wall; it was dragged upon a hurdle through the streets, hung up with the head downwards, and at last thrown into the public sewer, or burnt, or buried in the sand below high-water mark, or transfixed by a stake on the public highway.1

Punishment of suicide in England.-The mode of interment of a suicide in England used for a long time to be according to the rubric, that is to say, without the burial service being read over the grave. And it is said he was buried in a public cross-road, with a stake driven through his body. This burial was in 1824 directed to be discontinued, and instead, the felo de se is to be buried in the parish churchyard privately, between the hours of nine and twelve at night.3

Hale seemed to justify the posthumous punishment of suicide by saying, that it was a sin against God, and the sovereign had an interest in the life. And Blackstone, in the same vein, said, the law of England was wise and religious, and such a crime was an invasion of the prerogative of the Almighty. Though the studied degradation to the senseless body was repealed in 1824, the forfeiture of the suicide's personal estate continued to be the law till it was repealed in 1870. There is now, therefore, no longer the strong motive which formerly impelled the juries to find that the suicide was committed while the person was of unsound mind, for nothing now turns on that charitable perjury, unless, indeed, by reason of some contract between the parties it has been otherwise agreed.5

1 2 Lecky, Hist. Mor. 53. The early Church punished with excommunication all who laid violent hands on themselves, who were known by the common name of self-murderers. Such persons were denied a Christian burial and the benefit of all memorial in the Church's prayers after death.-Bing. Chr. Antiq. b. xvi. c. 10.

2 4 Bl. Com. 190. Sir J. Mackintosh said, there was no authority in the books except Blackstone's for this treatment of the body.-9 Parl. Deb. (2nd.) 414. It is mentioned, in 17 St. Tr. 56, that the stake was driven through the suicide's body.

3 4 Geo. IV. c. 52.

4 33 & 34 Vic. c. 23, § 1. Mackintosh observed, that the barbarity of punishing the relatives of a suicide was enhanced when there was neither trial nor defence.

Other legal consequences of suicide.-Whatever other consequences flow from the fact of suicide, they flow now, not from the common or statute law, but merely from some collateral contract. In contracts for life insurance and similar contracts which rest on the basis of the natural desire of life, it is obvious that any capricious destruction of life by the party assured will be a violation of the bargain, and will discharge the opposite party, who engaged to pay certain moneys only in the event of natural or accidental death, under neither of which categories will suicide come. There is no hardship or injustice therefore now resulting to the friends or relatives of a suicide, other than such as result from the breach of some contract which the deceased had engaged, but has failed, to observe. Such cases occur most frequently in reference to insurances of life. When an insured person commits suicide, the rule is, that if the act is done in a state of insanity, the life assurance is not void,1 unless an express condition to that effect is inserted in the policy, which is often the case.2

Discovery of murderer and function of coroner.-The law of murder is not complete, unless in addition to the ordinary modes of punishing the crime, the case be also contemplated of the murderer being unknown. It would be a singular omission, if any municipal law failed to give some assistance in cases where a murder has obviously been perpetrated, but owing to its secrecy, no trace of the criminal is extant, and thereby all the benefit of the elaborate machinery, matured by centuries of experience, for executing justice has become lost in any one instance. Much of the efficacy of modes of punishment depends on the certainty with which they can be brought to bear. But when a crime of this kind is committed, it is, according to the theory of the law, the interest and duty of each and all to give some help towards vindicating its infraction. In this country the prosecution of crime is left to the natural revenge, or, as some would call it, the natural resentment, of those individuals

9 Parl. Deb. (2nd) 416. He also told the House of Commons such punishment was an act of malignant and brutal folly, useless to the dead, torture to the living.-Ibid. 414.

1 Horn v Anglo-Australian Co., 30 L. J. Ch. 511; Solicitors Co. Lamb, 2 De G. J. & S. 251. 2 White British Empire Co. L. R. 7 Eq. 394.

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