Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/189

 Ch. 14. WRONGS. 177

ciety. Upon thefe accounts it is, that, befides the private fatis- faclion due and given in many cafes to the individual, by action for the private wrong, the government alfo calls upon the offender to fubmit to public punifhment for the public crime. And the profecution of thefe offences is always at the fuit and in the name of the king, in whom by the texture of our conftitution the jus gladii, or executory power of the law, entirely refides. Thus too, in the old Gothic conftitution, there was a threefold punim- ment inflicted on all delinquents : firft, for the private wrong to the party injured j fecondly, for the offence againft the king by difobedience to the laws ; and thirdly, for the crime againft the public by their evil example 3. Of which we may trace the groundwork, in what Tacitus tells us of his Germans b ; that, whenever offenders were fined, " pars mulSlae regi, vel civitati, "pars ipfi qui vindicatur vcl propinquis ejus, exfohitur"

THESE crimes and mifdemefnors againft private fubjecls arc principally of three kinds ; againft their perfons, their habita- tiotis, and their property.

OF crimes injurious to the perfons of private fubjedls, the moft principal and important is the offence of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator ; and of which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himfelf or another, but in fome manner either expreflly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, thofe laws which the creator has given us ; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revela- tion. The fubjecT: therefore of the prefent chapter will be, the offence of homicide or deftroying the life of man, in it's feveral ftages of guilt, arifing from the particular circumftances of mi- tigation or aggravation which attend it.

homicide, or the killing of any human creature, is of three kinds; jutifiable, excuable, and felonious. The firft has no hare of guilt at all; the econd very little; but the third is

a Stiernhook, /. i.e. 5. k de nir. Germ. c. iz.

VOL. IV. Y the