Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/39

Ch. 2. formance of a lawful act, the party tands excued from all guilt: but if a man be doing any thing unlawful, and a conequence enues which he did not foreee or intend, as the death of a man or the like, his want of foreight hall be no excue; for, being guilty of one offence, in doing antecedently what is in itelf unlawful, he is criminally guilty of whatever conequence may follow the fit mibehaviour.

, ignorance or mitake is another defect of will; when a man, intending to do a lawful act, does that which is unlawful. For here the deed and the will acting eparately, there is not that conjunction between them, which is neceary to form a criminal act. But this mub be an ignorance or mitake of fact, and not an error in point of law. As if a man, intending to kill a thief or houebreaker in his own houe, by mitake kills one of his own family, this is no criminal action : but if a man thinks he has a right to kill a peron excommunicated or outlawed, wherever he meets him, and does o; this is wilful murder. For a mitake in point of law, which every peron of dicretion not only may, but is bound and preumed to know, is in criminal caes no ort of defence. Ignorantia juris, quod quifque tenetur fcire, neminem excufat, is as well the maxim of our own law as it was of the Roman.

pecies of defect of will is that ariing from compulion and inevitable neceity, Thee are a contraint upon the will, whereby a man is urged to do that which his judgment diapproves; and which, it is to be preumed, his will (if left to itelf) would reject. As punihments are therefore only inflicted for the abue of that free-will, which God has given to man, it is highly jut and equitable that a man mould be excued for thoe acts, which are done through unavoidable force and compulion. Rh