Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/38

26 excue for any criminal mibehaviour. A drunkard, ays ir Edward Coke, who is voluntarius daemon, hath no privilege thereby; but what hurt or ill oever he doth, his drunkennes doth aggravate it: nam, omne crimen ebrietas, et incendit, et detegit. It hath been oberved, that the real ue of trong liquors, and the abue of them by drinking to exces, depend much upon the temperature of the climate in which we live. The ame indulgence, which may be neceary to make the blood move in Norway, would make an Italian mad. A German therefore, ays the preident Montequieu, drinks through cutom, founded upon contitutional neceity; a Spaniard drinks through choice, or out of the mere wantonnes of luxury: and drunkennes, he adds, ought to be more everely punihed, where it makes men michievous and mad, as in Spain and Italy, than where it only renders them tupid and heavy, as in Germany and more northern countries. And accordingly, in the warmer climate of Greece, a law of Pittacus enacted, "that he who committed a crime, when drunk, hould receive a double punihment;" one for the crime itelf, and the other for the ebriety which prompted him to commit it. The Roman law indeed made great allowances for this vice: "per vmum delapjis capitalis poena remittitur". But the law of England, conidering how eay it is to counterfeit this excue, and how weak an excue it is, (though real) will not uffer any man thus to privilege one crime by another.

deficiency of will, is where a man commits an unlawful act by misfortune or chance, and not by deign. Here the will oberves a total neutrality, and does not co-operate with the deed; which therefore wants one main ingredient of a crime. Of this, when it affects the life of another, we hall find more occaion to peak hereafter; at preent only oberving, that if any accidental michief happens to follow from the per Rh