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result, which seems to be a far less satisfactory test both of CH. XXVII. the moral guilt and of the public danger of an act of violence. It must, however, be recollected that the most serious of all the offences defined by the English law on this subject, namely, injuries inflicted with intent to murder, would, under French law, be dealt with as " tentatives," to commit either assassinat or meurtre, and would subject the offender upon conviction to the punishment inflicted for those offences.

The provisions of the French law as to bodily injuries not amounting to a tentative d'assassinat or de meurtre are stated in Articles 309-313 of the Penal Code. They establish a sort of scale for the punishment of "tout individu qui "volontairement aura fait des blessures, ou porté des coups, ou commis tout autre violence ou voie de fait," as follows:

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If there is premeditation or guet-apens, the punishment in case (a) is reclusion; in case (b) travaux forcés, 5-20 years; in case (c) travaux forcés for life.

Similar remarks apply as to the German law relating to attempts. Its provisions as to the intentional and negligent infliction of bodily injury are as follows:

Art. 223. Whoever intentionally ill treats the body of another, or injures his health, is punished with imprisonment up to three years, for the infliction of bodily harm (Korperverletzung).

223a. If the injury is inflicted by means of a weapon, particularly a knife, or some other dangerous instrument, or by means of a treacherous attack, or by several persons in common, or by any treatment (Behandlung) endangering life, the imprisonment must be for not less than two months.

CH. XXVII.

224. If the bodily injury has for its result that the injured person loses or is permanently injured to a serious extent as to any important member of the body, or if the sight of one eye or both eyes, or his hearing, or his power of speech, or his virility, or if he falls ill, or is crippled, or goes mad, the punishment is Zuchthaus up to five years, or imprisonment for not less than one year.

225. If the before-mentioned consequences were intended and happened, the Zuchthaus must be from two to ten years.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HISTORY OF THE LAW RELATING TO THEFT AND SIMILAR
OFFENCES.

NEXT to the crimes that affect the State at large and the CH. XXV.11. persons of individuals, come those which affect the properties and proprietary rights of individuals. These are the crimes which are most commonly committed, and for which the most elaborate provision has been made by legislation. The common feature of all of them is that the criminal seeks to deprive the lawful owner of his property. Before relating the history of these offences as defined by the law of England, it will be well to make some observations upon the divisions into which the subject falls apart from technicalities, and when considered solely in reference to those relations of life which are recognised and regulated by law, but are founded on human nature.

Offences relating to property fall into two principal classes, namely, fraudulent offences which consist in its misappropriation, and mischievous offences which consist in its destruction or injury. Theft is the typical fraudulent offence, and arson the typical mischievous offence.

The fraudulent offences may be further classified under four principal heads, namely, fraudulent misappropriations of property; forgery; offences connected with the coin; offences connected with trade. In each of these cases the object of the offender usually is the fraudulent acquisition of the property of another. In the case of forgery this object is attained by tampering with documents; in the case of coinage, offences by tampering with the coin; but each has

CH. XXVIII. the same object in view, namely, the fraudulent acquisition of property. Indeed if there were no special laws against forgery and coinage offences they would nearly all be punishable as cases of obtaining property by false pretences. Coinage offences have sometimes been regarded as offences against the State, and some of them were, down to the present century, regarded as a species of high treason, but this seems to me to be a classification upon a false principle. Such crimes have no special tendency to disturb the public peace, and have no other effect than that of defrauding particular people.

The offences relating to trade are of a special kind, and will be separately considered hereafter.

The present chapter, then, has for its subject offences consisting in the fraudulent misappropriation of property. No branch of the law is more intricate, and few are more technical. In order to understand it fully it is necessary to mention one well-known general principle as to property and proprietary rights. A thing is the property of a man when the man is enabled by law to deal with the thing at his pleasure in every way in which the law permits him to deal with it, and to exclude all other persons from dealing with it in any way whatever except by his consent. Hence property is a general name for a number of different rights, or legal powers which may be exercised over things, each of which rights taken separately may be regarded as the property of the person who is entitled to it. If I am the tenant in fee-simple of a freehold house it is my absolute property, and I may do with it whatever my interest or caprice may suggest, unless the law forbids me. But if I let it to a tenant the full property is in neither of us. The right to occupy on the terms of the lease is his property. The right to receive the rent and to resume the full property of the house at the end of the term are my property. So in the case of chattels. A cargo of wheat may, at the same time, be the property of A., be pledged to B., and be subject to a lien of C.'s. The strongest of all cases of divided ownership is that of trustee and cestui que trust. The trustee has the full legal interest, but he holds it solely for the benefit of other persons whose

POSSIBLE RELATIONS BETWEEN PERSONS AND THINGS.

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power over the subject-matter differs in various ways accord- CH. XXVIII. ing to the nature of the trust. All proprietary rights, however, have one feature in common: they must exist in relation to some thing, and though in strictness the rights rather than the thing to which they relate form the property of the different persons who are entitled to them, the word property is commonly applied to the thing and not to the rights thus connected with it.

The following are the principal legal relations which can exist between a person and a thing:

1. The person may be the absolute owner of the thing, no one else having any sort of interest in or power over it.

2. Two or more persons may be the joint owners of a thing, each being entitled either to the whole or to undivided shares of it.

3. There may be a general and a special property in a thing, one person having special rights over it and another being the owner for all other purposes subject to those rights. A pledgee, a bailee, a person entitled to a lien, has a special property in the thing pledged, bailed, or subject to the lien.

4. One or more persons may be the legal owners of a thing as trustees, the beneficial interest being in others according to the nature of the trust.

Besides these modifications of ownership there must be taken into account various modifications of the actual power which a man may have over a thing. These are possession and custody or charge. A moveable thing is said to be in the possession of a man when he is so situated in respect to it that he can act as its owner, and that it may be presumed that he will do so in case of need.

If one person gives to another the possession of a thing on terms that he shall use it for some special purpose and return it on demand, the person to whom such possession is given is said to have the custody or charge of the thing. The word charge is sometimes used, at least by lawyers, to indicate a less permanent and slighter connection with the thing than the word custody, though the two cannot be clearly distinguished. Wine in a cellar, of which the butler has the key, would be said to be in the butler's custody. A drinking-cup

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