Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/891

 TRESPASS TREVES 861 only in the legal sense, and is an important law terra. Familiar examples of trespass are assault and battery, forcible entry into a house or upon lands, breaking open a door, and tear- ing down a fence. Such acts are in law tres- passes m et armis, or, in the English phrase now used in indictments and declarations, trespasses yvith force and arms. Early in the history of the law a very slight degree of violence was suffi- cient to constitute this offence; and soon after- ward the law held that it might be committed in some cases without any actual force what- ever, implying by construction the force ne- cessary to make it a trespass m et armis, if the act were unlawful. Thus, for example, a peaceable entry into a house or land, with in- tent to take possession and oust the true owner, was regarded as a trespass m et armis. Soon after there grew up a large and very important class of trespasses, where there was neither actual nor constructive force. The courts in fact invented a form of action, by means of which remedies might be given for a great number of injuries, to which the law of tres- pass with force and arms could not be made applicable by any construction. This new legal trespass was called, in the law Latin in use when the action was first employed, trans- gressio super casum, and is now called a tres- pass on the case. In the days of special plead- ing it had become very difficult to determine whether the action by which redress was sought for in certain injuries should be trespass or trespass on the case ; and if the plaintiff mis- took his form of action, he wholly failed. But by recent statutes, with the rules of court and the amended practice, if a mistake be made it may be corrected without delay and without cost. Trespass with force and arms (or tres- pass alone, for the latter clause is often omitted) lies when the injury complained of is itself the wrong done by the defendant ; while tres- pass on the case lies when the injury was con- sequential upon the wrong done, and flowed from it indirectly. For example, trespass on the case lies for an injury sustained by the plaintiff from the defendant's sale to him of unwholesome food, as meat or wine, especially where it was the business of the defendant to sell these things. So for an injury caused by the want of skill of any person in the exercise of his profession, as a physician or lawyer. There is yet another nice and very important distinction in the law of trespass. A man may begin by doing a right thing in a right way, and then so change his course as to do a wrong thing, or a right thing in a wrong way. In some of these cases such a person thus sub- sequently trespassing is regarded by the law as a trespasser ab initio, or as having been a trespasser through the whole of his conduct. Thus, if, in the execution of a legal process, he does something which is distinctly illegal, the law considers that he began to act with intent to do an illegal thing, and that all of his conduct was tainted by this intention and was therefore illegal. The doctrine is applied only where the wrong was done while in the exercise of a strictly legal right, which the in- jured party had no right to resist, and seems to be confined by the best authorities to the cases of an officer of the law acting under a legal warrant, and a guest at an inn. TREVES (Ger. Trier), a town of Rhenish Prussia, on the right bank of the Moselle, 57 m. S. W. of Coblentz; pop. in 1871, 21,442. It is a decayed place, noted for its ultramon- tanism and for a cathedral which exhibits the development of the Romanesque style from the earliest period down to its completion in the 12th century, and contains remarkable altars, tombs, missals, and relics. (See Der Lorn zu Trier, by Wilmowsky, Treves, 1875.) Among the relics is the so-called "holy coat," which pilgrims revere as the seamless garment of the Saviour, and believe to have been deposited in the church by the empress Helena, the alleged founder of the building. The great agitation Ports Nigra, Treves. which resulted in 1844 from the multitudes (estimated at more than 1,000,000) flocking to this shrine was the main origin of the German Catholic denomination. Adjoining the cathe- dral is the LiebfrauenlcircTie of the 13th century, one of the earliest and finest specimens of pure Gothic. The university, founded in 1472, was superseded in 1798 by a gymnasium, which contains a city library of 100,000 volumes. In the old electoral palace are the barracks. The Roman antiquities, more numerous here than anywhere else in Germany, include part of the bridge over the Moselle, an amphitheatre, baths, and the colossal quadrangle known as porta nigra, the most conspicuous of all. The chief articles of trade are fruit, wine, timber, stones, and woollen and other manufactures. Treves was originally occupied by the Treviri, a Cel- tic tribe of Belgic Gaul, and under the Romans became the capital of a province under the name of Augusta Trevivorum. In the 4th cen- tury the town was improved by Constantino