Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/63

 CH. XX.] law implies, that it shall be punished with death, as well as with forfeiture.

§ 1156. Lord Coke has given a somewhat different account of the meaning of felony; for he says "ex vi termini significat quodlibet capitale crimen felleo animo perpetratum;" (that is, it signifies every capital offence committed with a felonious intent;) "in which sense murder is said to be done per feloniam, and is so appropriated by law, as that felonice cannot be expressed by any other word. This has been treated as a fanciful derivation, and not as correct, as that of Mr. J. Blackstone, who has followed out that of Spelman.

§ 1157. But whatever may be the true import of the word felony at the common law, with reference to municipal offences, in relation to offences on the high seas, its meaning is necessarily somewhat indeterminate; since the term is not used in the criminal jurisprudence of the Admiralty in the technical sense of the common law. Lord Coke long ago stated, that a pardon of felonies would not pardon piracy, for "piracy or robbery on the high seas was no felony, whereof the common law took any knowledge, &c.; but was only punishable by the civil law, &c.; the attainder by which law wrought no forfeiture of lands or corruption of blood." And he added, that the statute of 28 Henry 8, ch. 15, which created the High Commission Court for the trial of "all treasons, felonies, robberies, murders, and confederacies, committed in or upon the high sea, &c.," did not alter