Outlines of Criminal Iaw

Law Library Cornell Law School lloi THE GIFT OF Q.h.aa:les...K,...B.urd.ick. E Itli.aca,...New Ypri; Date Ap.r.i.l.....3.0.,..1941.. / foy Cornell University Library KF 9219.K36 1907 Outlines of criminal iaw / 3 1924 020 159 509 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924020159509 OUTLINES OF CRIMINAL LAW -y^^^i?^- OUTLINES OF CRIMINAL LAW BY COURTNEY STANHOPE gENNY, LL.D. OP Lincoln's inn, barkistbr-at-law ; keadbe in ENGLISH LAW, UNIVERSITY OP CAMBRIDGE REVISED AND ADAPTED FOR AMERICAN SCHOLARS BY JAMES H. WEBB, B.S., LL.B. INSTRUCTOR IN CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE, AND LECTURER ON MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE IN THE LAW DEPARTMENT OP TALE UNIVERSITY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & 00. Ltd. 1907 All rights reserved COPTEIGHT, 1907, bt the macmillan company. First English edition, xgo2. Reprinted 1904. American edition set up and eiectrotyped. Published February, X907. Kotinooti $tees J. S. Cashing & Co. — Berwick &, Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION Some excuse seems necessary for adding to the now somewhat redundant stores of English legal literature another elementary manual of Criminal Law. The only justification I can offer lies in the fact that the present volume embodies the substance of lectures which have been delivered at Cambridge year by year throughout the past quarter of a century — a period long enough to afford even the least competent lecturer some opportunity of ascertaining what principles, and what illustrations, are so successful in arresting the attention and impressing the memory of students as to be worth putting before them in the earliest manual which they peruse. In reducing my lectures to the form of a book, I have kept in view the needs of two classes of readers. For a general outline of Criminal Law may prove useful not only to young men preparing for academical or professional examinations, but also to many older men when called upon to undertake, without previous legal training, the duties of a justice of the peace. Both these classes find it important, moreover, to familiarise themselves with the foundations of the law of Evidence ; and I have therefore devoted a portion of the present volume to that subject. In preparing the book, I have aimed at making its range of topics no wider than may be grasped, upon a first perusal, even by a reader previously unfamiliar with law. But I have tried to treat each individual topic with such fulness as may serve to fix it effec- tually in the reader's memory. Yet the susceptibility of his memory must depend very much (as all lecturers soon discover) upon the extent to which the matter in hand arouses his interest. For- tunately the law of Crime — when once the preliminary difficulties attendant upon the chaotic form which it still retains in England have been faced and surmounted — is a branch of jurisprudence peculiarly capable of being rendered interesting. It is closely Vi PREFACE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION linked with history, with ethics, with politics, with philanthropy. My endeavour has been to make it attractive to the reader, by supplying him with enough illustrative examples to give vividness and reality to all the abstract principles of our Criminal Law; and also by tracing out its connexion with the past sufficiently to explain the various historical anomalies with which it is still encumbered; and, moreover, by suggesting to him the most important controversies — psychological, social, juridical — that it seems hkely to arouse in the future. Partly for the last-mentioned purpose, and partly because their importance even for present- day pi:actice seems to me to be greater than is often supposed, I have given more than usual prominence to the subjects of Malice, Responsibility, and the Measure of Punishment. I also have availed myself freely of the official statistics of our courts and prisons; in the hopes of enabling the reader to obtain a precise idea of the present administration of criminal justice in this country, and of the comparative importance of the various forms of its procedure. And I have taken account, in various places, of the important, though as yet unsuccessful, efforts made by Parlia- ment more than twenty years ago to improve both the substance and the form of English criminal law. To readers who have time to utilize the references given in the footnotes, it may be well to explain that I have preferred to cite Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law by the pages of its first edition, since that numbering remains recorded on the margins of the second edition also; and, further, that the cases cited as from "K. S. C." will be foimd in the volume of Select Cases in Criminal Law, prepared by me for the Cambridge Univer- sity Press. I cannot conclude this Preface without expressing the cordial thanks I owe to my friend, Mr. R. T. Wright, for his great kindness in reading through the whole of the proof-sheets and favouring me with many valuable suggestions; as also to my friend and former pupil, Mr. W. C. A. Landon, of Gray's Inn, for assiduously aiding me to prepare the book for the press, and for compiling the index. Downing Cambridge, May, 1902. PREFACE TO THE SECOND ENGLISH EDITION In revising the book, I have availed myself of various friendly suggestions for which I am grateful. I leam that some beginners find Chapter I., in its attempt to define the nature of Crime, exceptionally difi&cult. Those who do so, I advise to postpone its perusal until after they have read the rest of the volume. Definitions belong, indeed, rather to the end of our knowledge than to the beginning of it. C. S. K. September, 1903. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION The attempt to revise and rewrite so excellent a book as Mr. Kinney has produced for English scholars demands a word or two of apology or explanation. The difficulty that would arise in attempting to use the English edition for American students is at once apparent to any instructor who examines the book. So much consideration is necessarily given to modern English statutes and rules which do not obtain in the United States that the work of constantly pointing out to the student what portion of the original text must not be regarded as authoritative here would involve an unnecessary expenditure of time and effort. So, also, the general reader, for whom it is hoped this revision of Mr. Kinney's book may prove to be of more interest and value than the usual legal text-book, would have no assurance that the English book was a reliable guide to the laws of our land. The scholarly treatment of this most important branch of law, which is so abundantly disclosed in Mr. Kinney's English edition, appealed so strongly to the writer of this preface that he essayed the attempt to revise and adapt it for the use of his students in the Law Department of Yale University. It would also be a matter of congratulation if this adaptation of the English book for American students and readers should receive the favorable consideration of teachers in other colleges and universities as a text-book, not alone for students who intend to follow the profession of law, but for others as well who are pursuing a course of liberal studies along those branches of learning which concern most directly the social welfare of the community. The Civil Law attracted the attention of large numbers of students in the Universities of the Middle Ages, and it would seem that the law of Public Wrongs, as it has been evolved and developed by the Common Law, ought now to find some place in the cur- riculum of all our higher institutions of learning. X PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION The increasing number of legal Digests and Cyclopsedias wliich. afford the busy lawyer a quick and ready access to the authorities which he may need at short notice to sustain a point, still leaves open a most attractive and useful field of study for legal scholars who will undertake to trace the historical development of estab- lished rules of law, and discuss their philosophical relation to the new social and economic conditions of modern times. It will be observed that there has been retained in this American edition much of the original text relating to many important modem English statutes. Several of these, such as the Larceny Act of 1861, Sales of Goods Act of 1893, and the Police Property Act of 1897, should suggest certain legislative reforms and provisions which it would be prudent to adopt in the United States. Several chapters of the English book relating to the organization and jurisdiction of courts and methods of procedure have for obvious reasons been omitted. Most of the citations to English cases in the notes haVe been retained and some American authorities added. The editor desires here to acknowledge the valuable assistance of Mr. Howard G. Fuller, Jr., of the present senior class in the Yale Law School, who has kindly undertaken for him the correction of the proof sheets. JAMES H. WEBB. Yaie Uhivebsitt, February, 1907, INDEX OF CASES A XII INDEX OF CASES Coxhead v. Richards INDEX OF CASES xm PAGE Mulcahy v. R. Mullins V. Collins N Neal V. Fanner Newbury v. Goodwin Newman v.

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