Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/616

582 countries. In 1S46 an &quot;All England Eleven,&quot; under the captaincy of Clarke, The Nottingham Bowler, &quot; commenced playing matches against odds in various parts of the country. Since then several professional elevens annually play what may be termed exhibition matches, in all parts of Great Britain, Such contests are often detrimental to the professionals engaged in them, but on the other hand they have done much to diffuse a zeal for cricket, and at the present time there is not a county, large city, university, or public school, town or village, in England, which does not possess its cricket club, without mentioning the British colonies, and wherever Englishmen assemble abroad in sufficient numbers.

1em  CRICKLADE, a town and parliamentary borough of England on the northern borders of the county of Wilts, situated in a flat stretch of country on the right bank of the Thames, not far from the Thames and Severn Canal. The town consists of one rather mean-looking street ; and its principal buildings are St Sampson s Church restored in 1864, St Mary s with a fine Gothic cross in the church yard, and public chambers built in 1861. The trade is purely agricultural and local. The position of the town at the passage of the Thames gave it some little importance in the Saxon period, and it sent representatives to Parliament as early as the reign of Edward I. The present parlia mentary borough, which extends partly into Gloucester shire, and includes no fewer than fifty-two parishes or parts of parishes, with an area of 26,694 acres, had in 1871 a population of 43,622, of whom less than 2000 were in the town.  CRIEFF, a town in Perthshire, Scotland, on the north bank of the Earn, seventeen miles west of Perth by rail. It is situated on an acclivity rising from the river, which is here crossed by a bridge. It consists of a main street with narrower streets branching off at right angles, and con- tains several churches, an endowed academy for boys, an in dustrial institution, and a mechanics institute. The town ia comparatively modern, but an ancient sculptured stone still stands in the High Street and also the old town cross. Crieff owes its growth mainly to the central position it occupies in the district of upper Strathearn, which is noted for its beauty and salubrity. Strathearn House, a large hydropathic establishment on the slope of a hill above the town, attracts many visitors. Population in 1871, 4027.  CRIME is a word which, in every-diy speech, is some times made to include more and sometimes less than the subject of the present article. On the one hand, the breach of a moral principle, with which the law has never con cerned itself, is sometimes loosely described as criminal ; on the other hand, a distinction is sometimes drawn between crimes and minor offences, though the law prescribes a punishment for minor offences as well as for crimes. But if moral theories and slender shades of difference in guilt are disregarded, crime is simply conduct (either in commission or in omission) of which the state disapproves, and for which it demands a penalty. Though, however, it is possible to give a definition of crime which may hold good for all times and for all countries, it by no means follows that crime is always and everywhere the same. On the contrary, the growth and the changes of criminal laws are among the most curious monuments of revolutions in public opinion as displayed by legislation. Nor can the study of morals be altogether dissociated from the study of crime, because the moralist may and frequently does influence the legislator, and that which is but a moral lapse in one generation may &quot;become a criminal offence in another. So also deeds which have been considered praiseworthy at one period, may at another be punishable ; and new conditions of society may cause penalties to be exacted for action or for negligence which would be altogether inconceivable to the savage. It is obvious that no moral philosopher or legislator, no one even uniting in himself the functions of both, would be able to devise a penal code which would be all-sufficient, and which would be applicable to every possible detail in the development of an ever-expanding civilization. New circumstances demand new laws and the adaptation of new laws to new circumstances is not the least interesting feature in the history of any country. Religious beliefs, religious and other theories of ethics, the attacks of foreign enemies, the growth of commerce, the progress of science, everything which affects the condition of the community, may affect its criminal legislation. In very primitive tribes murder, robbery, and rape are not crimes—not, at least, in the modern sense. For one tribe to attack another by surprise, to slaughter its men, to appropriate its land, and to ravish or enslave its women was, and in some places still is, very meritorious conduct. The first approach towards the reprobation of murder is to be found in the ancient blood-feud which, however, resembles quite as much the ferocity of the wild beast deprived of its young as the indignation of the civilized human being at an attack upon the general security of life. The family of the slain assumed the right to exact vengeance of the slayer and his kin if members of the same tribe as themselves ; and the earliest form of vengeance was bloodshed. This was not modified until men had arrived at the notion of property distinguishable from that which was held in common by the tribe—a very important stage in the progress of human affairs. It is well established that the tenure of land in severalty is of later date than tenure by tin tribe or community at large ; and as soon as the claim of any individual to any particular piece of land was recognized, in any form, the right of property in movables must have been recognized also, if indeed the latter did not precede the former. Sooner or later the ownership of certain families was ad mitted in the case of plots of ground and flocks and herds, the ownership of particular persons in the case of arms and armour and the implements of agriculture. Hence arose the practice of compounding with the avengers of blood. The relatives of the slain agreed to accept cattle, or any movable goods of which they might stand in need, as an equivalent for the life of the kinsman whom they had lost. But Governments which had advanced very little on the path of civilization perceived that the loss of a tribesman was a loss to the community, because if for no other reason it represented a diminution of force in a conflict with a rival tribe. When a fine was paid for murder, therefore, a portion of it only was allotted to the kin of the person murdered, and the remainder to the king or other governing power. As soon as the state had thus claimed a share of the blood-fine, wer, or TTOIVT/, the foundation of the criminal law had been laid a distinction had been drawn between injuries affecting the individual alone and injuries affecting the community also. It was perhaps only natural that, when movables were accepted as compensation for a life held to be forfeited for murder, the wrongful appropriation of movables should be punishable by death a not uncommon penalty in many primitive laws. Extreme severity of punishment for all offences (except homicide) committed within the boundaries of the tribe is indeed the characteristic of all the earliest attempts to deal with crime. The idea of the uncivilized man is that the most 