merely for private lucre or advantage. A whole neighborhood of debtors may conspire together to resist the sheriff, and his officers in executing process on their property, they may perpetrate their resistance by force of arms, may kill the sheriff and yet they will be liable only as felons and not as traitors. Their insurrection is of a private, not of a public, nature; their object is to hinder or remedy a private, not a public, grievance. A number of fugitive slaves may infest a neighborhood, and may be encouraged by the neighbors in continuing to resist the capture of any of their number; they may resist with force and arms their master or the public officers who may come to arrest them; they may murder and rob them; they are guilty of felony and liable to punishment, but not as traitors. Their insurrection is for a private object, and connected with no public purpose. It is true that, constructively, they may be said to resist the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law; but in no other sense than the smugglers resist the revenue laws and the anti-renters the execution laws. Their insurrection, their violence, however great their numbers may be, so long as it is merely to attain some personal or private end of their own, cannot be called levying war. Alexander the Great may be classed with robbers by moralists, but still the political distinction will remain between war and robbery. One is public and national, the other private and personal."

On the other hand to take a stand against the government for the purpose of overthrowing its authority everywhere, is a different thing - the universality of the design making it a rebellion against the State. The acts of the Southern States, and of each man engaged in the resistance of the national authority in 1861 and until the war closed, were clearly "levying war" within the constitution, and all parties were technically guilty of treason. But as some one has written –

Treason can never prosper

what's the reason? If it does prosper, none dare call it treason.

When the attacks by a discontented people on the State succeed they are, of course, beyond the criminal law. And sometimes, too, when they do not succeed; but yet the outbreak has changed into a war in which each side is strong enough to compel the other to treat its adherents as enemies and not as criminals. This was the case with our late civil war.

Misprision of treason is concealing a knowledge of a treason which has been committed or is contemplated. It is punished by a fine and imprisonment.

Sedition is by word, deed, or writing to disturb the tranquility of the State, and stir up opposition to the government. The word is commonly used to include words written or spoken, but it may include many other acts such as training to arms, holding unlawful meetings, etc.

Piracy consists in committing acts of robbery and depredation on the high seas which if commited on land would be felonies. The United States punishes the offense, because the "high seas are not within the jurisdiction of any particular State. The term "high seas" includes not only the ocean, but every river, harbor, bay or other water outside the jurisdiction of any State, and where the tide ebbs and flows. The offense and punishment have been expressly defined by act of Congress. See U. S. Rev. Stat., § 5368.

BARRATRY.

STATE v. CHITTY.

[1 Bailey, 379.]

A justice of the peace of Charleston, S. C., with an eye to the fees which would accrue therefrom, was in the habit of advising those whom he found out had grievances or claims to sue in his court. Notwithstanding that in each case the party had a just ground of action, it was held that the justice was a "common barrator" and punishable, by that law which he helped to administer, with both fine and imprisonment.

The common law does not encourage strife, and to this end punishes the stirring up of lawsuits or the meddling in disputes not one's own. Under this head come three crimes, viz.: Barratry, Maintenance, and Champerty.

Maintenance is meddling in a suit which is none of one's business, as by assisting either party to prosecute or defend it.

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Champerty is doing the same thing, it being agreed that the party assisting shall receive a portion of the judgment when recovered. In the old reports these crimes are frequent, but in this country, for reasons which have weighed with our judges such as the policy of permitting a poor litigant, or one who has a valuable claim but no money to prosecute it with, to get outside assistance in carrying on his suit- these old offenses are not now regarded as crimes. Barratry, however, which is the frequent stirring up of suits and quarrels, is still an indictable offense. "Barratry," says a modern writer, "is habitual champerty or maintenance, and is committed where one has become so accustomed to intermeddle in strifes or controversies in and out of court that he may be said to be a common mover, exciter, and maintainer of suits or quarrels, as one becomes

a common scold by the too frequent and habitual abusive use of the tongue, or a common seller of liquor who habitually sells it in violation of law. A series of acts not less than three are necessary to constitute the habit which is the gist of the crime of barratry. The offense of barratry may be committed by a justice of the peace, who stirs up prosecutions to be had before himself for the sake of fees (Justice Chitty's case above), and it seems by one who unnecessarily and for the purpose of opposing his adversary brings numerous ungrounded suits in his own right. Com. v. McCulloch, 15 Mass. 227." May Cr. L., § 66.

6

COMPOUNDING OFFENSES.

COM. v. PEASE.

[16 Mass. 91]

Titus Pease may be said to illustrate the truth of the saying that the road of the transgressor is apt to be thorny. Discovering that one of his servants had been robbing him he promised the thief that if he would pay him, $100 he would not send him to jail. The thief had no ready money, but having some property, Titus agreed to take his promissory note for $100. The thief gave the note, but before paying it died, and when Titus presented it to the executor, the latter refused to recognize it at all. Titus went home feeling rather disgusted at the way his forbearance had resulted. The next morning, on being arrested on a charge of conpounding a felony, he felt more disgusted, but was sure that the fact that he had got no value for the note would be sufficient to clear him.

"What," said Chief

Titus, however, was mistaken. Justice Parker, "is the gist of the offense? It is the concealing of the crime, and abstaining from prosecution to the detriment of the public. Now, if a man is induced to this by the promise of money and actually takes an obligation for the money, everything necessary to constitute him a criminal in the eye of the law seems to be done."

To compound a crime is to agree not to prosecute it, knowing it to have been committed. The most common form is what used to