Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/65

Rh M U R M U R 53 otherwise be murder is not murder but manslaughter if the act by which death is caused is done in the heat of passion, caused by provocation,&quot; the acts amounting to which are enumerated. But provocation does not extenuate the offence &quot; unless the person provoked is at the time when he does the act deprived of the power of self-control by the pro vocation which he has received, and in deciding the ques tion whether this was or was not the case regard must be had to the nature of the act by which the offender caused death, to the time which elapsed between the provocation and the act which caused death, to the offender s conduct during that interval, and to all other circumstances tend ing to show the state of his mind.&quot; The law of the future is almost certainly to be found in the draft code presented by the Criminal Code Bill Com missioners of 1879, and founded on Mr Justice Stephen s Digest above cited. The enactment of this measure being a mere question of time some of its provisions may usefully be stated here. After denning homicide and culpable homicide, the code (sect. 74) declares culpable homicide to be murder in the following cases : (a) if the offender means to cause the death of the person killed ; (6) if the offender means to cause to the person killed any bodily injury which is known to the offender to be likely to cause death, and if the offender, whether he does or does not mean to cause death, is reckless whether death ensues or not ; (&amp;lt;) if the offender means to cause death or such bodily injury as aforesaid to one person, so that if that person be killed the offender would be guilty of murder, and by accident or mistake the offender kills another person though he does not mean to hurt the person killed ; (d) if the offender for any unlawful object does an act which he knows or ought to have known to be likely to cause death, and thereby kills any person, though he may have desired that his object should be effected without hurting any one. Further (sect. 75), it is murder (whether the offender means or not death to ensue, or knows or not that death is likely to ensue) in the following cases : &quot; (a) if he means to inflict grievous bodily injury for the purpose of facili tating the commission of any of the offences hereinafter mentioned, or the flight of the offender upon the commis sion or attempted commission thereof, and death ensues from his violence ; (6) if he administers any stupefying thing for either of the purposes aforesaid and death ensues from the effects thereof ; (c) if he by any means wilfully stops the breath of any person for either of the purposes aforesaid and death ensues from such stopping of the breath.&quot; The following are the offences referred to : &quot;high treason and other offences against the queen s authority, piracy and offences deemed to be piracy, escape or rescue from prison or lawful custody, resisting lawful appre hension, murder, rape, forcible abduction, robbery, burglary, arson.&quot; The code (sect. 7G) reduces culpable homicide to manslaughter if the person who causes death does so &quot;in the heat of passion caused by sudden provoca tion ; &quot; and &quot; any ivrongful act or insult of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive any ordinary person of the power of self-control may be provocation if the offender acts upon it on the sudden, and before there has been time for his passion to cool.&quot; &quot;Whether any particular wrongful act or insult amounts to provocation and whether the offender was deprived of self-control shall be questions of fact ; but no one shall be deemed to give provocation by doing that which he had a legal right to do, or which the offender incited him to do in order to provide an excuse for killing him or doing grievous bodily harm. Further, &quot; an arrest shall not necessarily reduce the offence from murder to manslaughter because an arrest was illegal, but if the ille gality was known to the offender it may be evidence of provocation.&quot; The &quot;provocation&quot; clause is not very happily expressed and will doubtless have to be recast. America. The most notable difference between England and tlie United States in regard to the law on this subject is the recognition by recent State legislation of degrees in murder. English law treats all unlawful killing not reducible to manslaughter as of the same degree of guilt. American statutes seek to discriminate between the graver and the less serious forms of the crime. Thus an Act of the legislature of Pennsylvania (22d April 1794) declares all murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison or by lying in wait or by any other kind of wilful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, or burglary shall be deemed murder of the first degree ; and all other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder of the second degree. This statute, says Bishop (Commentaries on the Criminal Law, vol. ii. 745), &quot;is the parent of all the others. &quot; In Michigan it has been enacted in exact words ; and in most of the other States which have adopted this line of legislation the departure from the language of the Pennsylvania provision is not such as calls for the application of different prin ciples of interpretation. It is pointed out by Bishop that the lan guage used in these statutes to discriminate the degrees of murder is similar to that by which the common law distinction between murder and manslaughter is usually expressed. Thus in Massachu setts murder committed with &quot;deliberately premeditated malice aforethought &quot; is in the first degree. In Indiana the expression used is &quot;purposely and of deliberate and premeditated malice.&quot; The technical interpretation of &quot;malice aforethought &quot; in English law is of course inapplicable to these phrases. There are also statutory degrees of manslaughter in the legislation of some of the States, but Bishop observes that &quot;the books do not contain sufficient ad judications to direct us into a profitable discussion of this subject.&quot; For some historical account of the law reference should be made to Mr Jus tice Stephen s History of the Criminal Law of England (London, 1883), vol. iii. c. 26. Stephen finds in the laws of Alfred the earliest and most important recog nition of the properly criminal consequences of homicide as distinguished from the damages to be paid to the family of the deceased and the compensation to be made to the person whose peace had been broken, which are the prominent points of the early law of homicide. (E. R.) MURDOCK, WILLIAM (1754-1839), inventor, was born near the village of Auchinleck in Ayrshire on 25th August 1754. His father, John Murdoch (as the name is spelt in Scotland), was a millwright and miller, and William was brought up in the same occupation until 1777, when, at the age of twenty-three, he entered the employment of Boulton and Watts in the Soho Works at Birmingham. Shortly afterwards he was sent to Corn wall to superintend the fitting of Watts s engines, which had come to be in demand there. While staying at Red- ruth he had carried a series of experiments in the distil lation of coal-gas so far that in 1792 he was able to apply the new invention to the purpose of lighting his cottage and offices ; renewing his researches after his return to Birmingham (where he had become a partner in the firm), he made such progress in the discovery of practical methods for making, storing, and purifying the new illumi- nant that in 1802 the whole exterior of the factory was lighted with it in celebration of the peace of Amiens. Murdock was also the inventor of important improvements in the steam-engine ; besides introducing the double D slide-valve, he was the first to devise an oscillating engine, and as early as 1784 he had constructed a model high- pressure engine to run on wheels. His inventive ingenuity was also directed to various applications of compressed air and of the exhausted air-tube; and in 1803 he also con structed a steam-gun. He retired from business in 1830, and died in 1839. His &quot;Account of the Application of the Gas from Coal to Economical Purposes &quot; appeared in the Phil. Trans, for 1808. MURE, WILLIAM (1799-1860), historian of Greek litera ture, was born at the family seat near Caldwell, Ayrshire, Scotland, 9th July 1799. He was educated at West minster school and Edinburgh, and he spent several years at the university of Bonn, where he laid the foundations of his classical knowledge. From 1846 to 1855 he repre sented the county of Renfrew in parliament in the Con servative interest, and he was lord rector of Glasgow