the colonies, shall (except in some particular cases therein specified), within the jurisdiction of the admiralty, knowingly convey, or assist in conveying, persons as slaves, or to be dealt with as slaves, or ship them for that purpose, he shall be deemed guilty of piracy, felony and robbery (d).

Formerly the punishment for most piratical offences was death. But it has been thought expedient to relax this severity; and now, whoever shall be convicted of piracy, is liable to be sentenced to penal servitude for life or any term not less than five years; or to be imprisoned, (with or without hard labour,) for any term not more than two years (e). But, whoever, with intent to commit, or at the time of or immediately before or after committing, the crime of piracy, shall assault with intent to murder, or stab or wound, or unlawfully do any act by which the life of any person on board of or belonging to any ship or vessel may be endangered,-is liable to suffer death as a felon (f).

(d) See R. v. Zulueta, 1 Car. & Kir. 215; Buron v. Denman, 2 Exch. 167.

(e) 5 Geo. 4, c. 113; 7 Will. 4 & 1 Vict. c. 88; 9 & 10 Vict. c. 24; 16 & 17 Vict. c. 99; 20 & 21 Vict. c. 3; 27 & 28 Vict. c. 47.

(f) 7 Will. 4 & 1 Vict. c. 88, s. 2. As to the general law with respect to wounding, &c. with intent to

murder, vide sup. p. 79. The Report of the Criminal Code Bill Commission (p. 20) points out that though piracy is punishable with death if accompanied by personal violence, sentence of death may be recorded, instead of being pronounced in open court, and the effect of this is to save the offender's life.

CHAPTER VII.

of offences AGAINST RELIGION, MORALS AND PUBLIC CONVENIENCE.

Ir was laid down at the outset of this work that rights are liberties secured to the individual by the compact of civil society (a); and at the beginning of our present division we defined crimes as the violation of rights when considered in a particular point of view, viz. in reference to the evil effect of such violation as regards the community at large (b). It follows from this, that crimes, in contemplation of law, essentially consist in the breach of human institutions: and therefore, though some of the offences treated of in this chapter are enumerated as offences against religion, yet in a treatise of municipal law, we must consider them as deriving their particular guilt from the law of man.

Of those offences against religion of which cognizance is thus taken by human tribunals, the first we will notice is that of

I. [Apostasy, or a total renunciation of Christianity, by embracing either a false religion or no religion at all. This offence can only take place, in such as have once professed the true religion. The perversion of a Christian to judaism, paganism, or other false religion, was punished by the Emperors Constantius and Julian with confiscation of goods (c); to which the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian added capital punishment, in case the apostate endeavoured to pervert others to the same iniquity (d) :

(a) Vide sup. vol. 1. p. 29. (b) Vide sup. p. 4.

(c) Cod. 1. 7, 1.
(d) Cod. 6.

[a punishment too severe for any temporal laws to inflict upon any spiritual offence: and yet the zeal of our ancestors imported it into this country; for we find by Bracton, that in his time apostates were to be burnt to death (e). Doubtless the preservation of Christianity, as a national religion, is, abstracted from its own intrinsic truth, of the utmost consequence to the state; and therefore all endeavours to depreciate its efficacy in those who have once professed it, are highly deserving of censure. But yet the loss of life is a heavier penalty than the offence, taken in a civil light, deserves; and taken in a spiritual light, our laws have no jurisdiction over it. This punishment, therefore, has long ago become obsolete; and the offence of apostasy was for a long time the object only of the ecclesiastical courts, which corrected the offender pro salute anime. But about the close of the sixteenth century the civil liberties to which we were then restored, being used as a cloak of maliciousness; and the most horrid doctrines, subversive of all religion, being publicly avowed, both in discourse and writings, it was thought necessary again for the civil power to interpose, by not admitting those miscreants to the privileges of society, who maintained such principles as destroyed all moral obligation (f).] To this end it was enacted by stat. 9 Will. III. c. 35, that if any person educated in, or having made profession of, the Christian religion, shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, assert or maintain there are more Gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true (g), or the holy scripture of the old and new testament to be of divine authority, he shall upon the first offence be rendered incapable to

hold any ecclesiastical, civil or military office or employment; and for the second, be rendered incapable of bringing any action, (or to be guardian, executor, legatee, or donee,) and shall suffer three years' imprisonment without bail. To give room, however, for repentance ;if, within four months after the first conviction, the delinquent will in the court in which he was convicted renounce his error, he is discharged for that once from all penalties and disabilities.

II. A second offence is that of heresy; which consists not in a total denial of Christianity, but in the public and obstinate denial of some of its principal doctrines (h).

[Heresy was described among the canonists, in vague and general terms, as consisting of any deviation from the true Catholic faith, as understood by Holy Mother Church (i),—very contrary to the usage of the first general councils, which defined all heretical doctrines with the utmost precision and exactness (j); and spoke of heretics by name, as in the case of the Manichæans, Nestorians, and others (). The cognizance of heresy has always been held in every country, where the canon law has prevailed, to belong to the ecclesiastical judge (1); and the canonists have ever treated it with great severity. On the continent, they prevailed upon the weakness of bigoted princes to make the civil power subservient to their purposes, by making heresy not only a temporal, but even a capital offence: the Romish ecclesiastics determining without appeal whatever they pleased to be heresy; and shifting off to the secular arm the odium and drudgery of executions, with which they themselves were too tender and delicate to intermeddle. Nay, they pretended to intercede

(h) 1 Hale, P. C. 384.

(i) "Hæreticus, qui de articulis fidei aliter prædicat, sentit, vel doceat, quàm docet sancta mater ecclesia."See 1 Hale, P. C. 383.

(j) 4 Bl. Com. p. 45.
(k) See Hale, ubi sup.

(1) Year Book, 27 Hen. 8, 14 b; stat. 2 Hen. 4, c. 15; Hale, ubi sup.; Bl. Com., ubi sup.

[and pray on behalf of the convicted heretic, ut citra mortis periculum sententia circa eum moderetur (m), well knowing at the same time that they were delivering the unhappy victim to certain death. Hence the capital punishments inflicted on the antient Donatists and Manichæans, by the Emperors Theodosius and Justinian (»); hence also the constitution of the Emperor Frederic, mentioned by Lyndewode (o): adjudging all persons without distinction to be burned by fire, who were convicted of heresy by the ecclesiastical judge. The same emperor, in another constitution, ordained that if any temporal lord, when admonished by the Church, should neglect to clear his territories of heretics within a year, it should be lawful for good Catholics to seize and occupy the lands, and utterly to exterminate the heretical possessors (p). And upon this foundation was built that arbitrary power, so long claimed and so fatally exercised by the Pope, of disposing even of the kingdoms of refractory princes, to more dutiful sons of the Church. The immediate event of this constitution was somewhat singular, and may serve to illustrate at once the gratitude of the holy see and the just punishment of the royal bigot,for upon the authority of this very constitution the Pope afterwards expelled this very Emperor Frederic from his kingdom of Sicily, and gave it to Charles of Anjou (q).

Christianity being thus deformed by the demon of persecution upon the continent, we cannot expect that our own island should have been entirely free from the same scourge.] And accordingly we not only find that our ecclesiastical courts were always in the habit of proceeding against heretics by spiritual punishments, such as penance, excommunication and the like; but we also discover among our antient precedents a writ de hæretico com

(m) Greg. Decret. lib. 5, t. 40, c. 27.

(n) Cod. 1. i. tit. 5.

(0) C. de Hæreticis.

(p) Cod. 1, 5, 4.

(2) Baldus in Cod. 1, 5, 4.