OFFENCES AGAINST RELIGION. 277 such principles as destroyed all moral obligation. To this end it was enacted by stat. 9 & 10 Wm. III., c. 32, that if any person educated in, or having made profession of the Christian religion, shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advisedly speaking, deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of Divine origin, he shall upon the first offence be rendered incapable to hold any office or place of trust; and, for the second offence, be rendered incapable of bringing any action, or of being guardian, executor, legatee, or donee, and shall suffer three years' imprisonment without bail. To give room, however, for repentance, if, within four months after the first conviction the delinquent will in open court publicly renounce his error, he is discharged from all disabilities. Prosecutions for offences of this nature have now become practically extinct. II. HERESY, which consists, not in a total denial of Christianity, but in a denial of some of its principal doctrines, publicly and obstinately avowed, is no longer cognizable by courts temporal.* The Tests and Corporation Acts were repealed by the stat. of 9 Geo. IV., c. 17, which has been supplemented by various very liberal enactments-9 & 10 Vict., c. 59; and 29 & 30 Vict., c. 22, passed to prevent the exclusion from corporate and other offices of Protestant Nonconformists on the ground of their religious convictions. An Act has also been recently passed, 34 & 35 Vict., c. 26, to alter the law respecting religious tests in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, and in the Halls and Colleges of those Universities. III. BLASPHEMY against the Almighty, or jestingly or profanely scoffing at the Holy Scriptures, is punishable at common law by fine and imprisonment, or corporal punishment; for Christianity forms part of the laws of England. IV. RELIGIOUS IMPOSTORS, or persons who pretend an extraordinary commission from Heaven, or terrify the ignorant with false denunciations of judgments, are punishable by fine and imprisonment. For writ de hæretico comburendo, and the sanguinary penal enactments that were formerly in force against heretics, see "Blackstone," vol. IV., chap. 5. V. PROFANATION of the Lord's Day is an offence against religion, and is punishable by the municipal law of England. By 21 Geo. III., c. 49, any house opened for public entertainment or debate on the Lord's Day shall be deemed a disorderly house, and the owner punishable as such; and by 35 & 36 Vict., c. 94, no person licensed or authorized to sell fermented or distilled liquors shall, during certain specified hours on Sundays, except for travellers, open his house for sale of such liquors, or sell the same, under a penalty of £10 for every such offence, to be recovered before a justice of the peace; and every separate sale shall be deemed a separate offence. Other restrictions are also provided.* VI. Any person who is guilty of riotous, violent, or indecent behaviour in church, or any place of religious worship duly certified under 18 & 19 Vict., c. 81, or who shall molest the clergyman or minister, is liable to fine and imprisonment. * See Licensing Act (1872), 35 & 36 Vict, c. 94. CHAPTER IV. OFFENCES AGAINST THE LAW OF NATIONS. Let us next consider the offences, more immediately repugnant to the universal law of society, which regulate the mutual intercourse between one State and another; or at all events, such of them as are particularly animadverted on by English law. Explain the Offences against the Law of Nations cognizable by the Laws of England. The Law of Nations is a system of rules, deducible by natural reason, and established by universal consent among the civilized inhabitants of the world, in order to decide all disputes, to regulate all ceremonies and civilities, and to insure the observance of justice and good faith in that intercourse which must frequently occur between two or more independent states, and the individuals belonging to each. This general law is founded upon the principle-that different nations ought, in the time of peace, to do one another all the good they can; and, in time of war, as little harm as possible, without prejudice to their own real interests. And, as none of these states will allow a superiority in the other, therefore neither can dictate nor prescribe the rules of this law to the rest; but such rules must necessarily result from those principles of natural justice, in which the learned of every nation agree, and to which all civilized States have assented; or they depend upon mutual compacts or treaties between the respective communities, in the construction of which there is no judge to resort to, but the law of nature and reason, being the only one with which the contracting parties are equally conversant, and to which they are equally subject. In arbitrary states this law, whenever it contradicts or is not provided for by the municipal law of the country, is enforced by the royal power; but since in England no royal power can introduce a new law, or suspend the execution of the old, therefore the law of nations, wherever any question arises which is properly the object of its jurisdiction, is here adopted in its full extent by the common law, and is held to be a part of the law of the land. And those acts of Parliament, which have from time to time been made to enforce this universal law, or to facilitate the execution of its decisions, are not to be considered as introductive of any new rule, but merely as declaratory of the old fundamental constitutions of the kingdom, without which it must cease to be a part of the civilized world. Thus in mercantile questions, such as bills of exchange and the like; in all marine causes, relating to freight, average, demurrage, insurances, bottomry, and others of a similar nature; the law-merchant, which is a branch of the law of nations, is regularly and constantly adhered to; so when even international questions arise, there is no cther rule of decision but this universal law collected from history and usage, and such writers of all nations and languages whose authority is generally acknowledged and established. Offences against this law are principally incident to whole states or nations, in which case, if arbitration or treaty fail, recourse can only be had to war; but where the individuals of any state violate this general law, it is then the interest as well as the duty of the government under which they live, to animadvert upon them with a becoming severity, that the peace of the world may be maintained; for in vain would nations in their collective capacity observe these universal rules, if private subjects were at liberty to break them at their own discretion, and involve the two states in a war. It is therefore incumbent upon the nation injured, first to demand satisfaction and justice to be done on the offender, by the state to which he belongs; and, if that be refused or neglected, the sovereign then avows himself an accomplice or abettor of his subject's crime, and may draw upon his community the calamities of foreign war.* *See Serving in a Foreign State, fitting out vessels, &c., page 289. The principal offences against the law of nations are of three kinds : : I. As to the first, violation of safe-conducts or passports expressly granted by the Crown or its ambassadors to the subjects of a foreign power in time of mutual war; or committing acts of hostilities against such as are in amity, league, or truce with us, and are here under a general implied safe-conduct; these are breaches of the public faith, without the preservation of which there can be no intercourse or commerce between one nation and another; and such offences may, according to the writers upon the law of nations, constitute a just ground of war; since it is not in the power of the foreign prince to cause justice to be done to his subjects by the very individual delinquent, but he must require it of the whole community. And, as during the continuance of any safe-conduct, either express or implied, the foreigner is under the protection of the sovereign and the law; and, more especially, as it is one of the articles of Magna Charta, that foreign merchants should be entitled to safe-conduct and security throughout the kingdom, there is no question but that any violation of either the person or property of such foreigner may be punished by indictment in the name of the sovereign, whose honour is more particularly engaged in supporting his own safeconduct. ངཤཱཀཱཤཱཀ《ཀཱརྐ II. The rights of Ambassadors are also established by the law of nations. The common law of England recognizes them in their full extent by immediately stopping all legal process sued out through the ignorance or rashness of individuals, which may trench upon the immunities of a foreign minister or the members of his embassy. And the more effectually to enforce the law of nations in this respect, when violated through wantonness or insolence, severe penalties have been attached to any breach of it by the statute law. m III. The crime of Piracy, or robbery and depredation upon the high seas, is an offence against the universal law of society; a pirate being, according to Sir Edward Coke, hostis humani generis. As, therefore, he has renounced all the benefits of society and government, and has reduced himself afresh to the savage state of nature, by declaring war against all mankind, all mankind |