Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/202

 190 PUBLIC BOOK IV. therefore, if a real lunatic kills himfelf in a lucid interval, he is a felo de fe as much as another man s. BUT now the queftion follows, what punifhment can human laws inflift on one who has withdrawn himfelf from their reach? They can only aft upon what he has left behind him, his repu- tation and fortune: on the former, by an ignominious burial in the highway, with a take driven through his body; on the latter, by a forfeiture of all his goods and chattels to the king: hoping that his care for either his own reputation, or the wel- fare of his family, would be fome motive to reflrain him from fo defperate and wicked an aft. And it is obfervable, that this forfeiture has relation to the time of the aft done in the felon's lifetime, which was the caufe of his death. As if hufband and wife be poffefled jointly of a term of years in land, and the huf- band drowns himfelf; the land mail be forfeited to the king, and the wife mall not have it by furvivorihip. For by the aft of calling himfelf into the water he forfeits the term; which gives a title to the king, prior to the wife's title by furvivorihip, which could not accrue till the inftant of her hufband's death '. And, though it mufl be owned that the letter of the law herein borders a little upon feverity, yet it is fome alleviation that the power of mitigation is left in the breafl of the fovereign, who upon this (as on all other occaiions) is reminded by the oath of his office to execute judgment in mercy.

THE other fpecies of criminal homicide is that of killing an- other man. But in this there are alfo degrees of guilt, which divide the offence into manlaughter, and murder. The difference between which may be partly collected from what has been in- cidentally mentioned in the preceding articles, and principally coniiils in this, that manflaughter arifes from the fudden heat of the paflions, murder from the wickednefs of the heart.

5 I Hal. P. C. 412. ' Finch. L. 216.

i. MAN-