Commentaries on the Laws of England Author:John Adams, William Blackstone Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER THE SECOND. Of The PERSONS CAPABLE Of COMMITTING CRIMES. TJAVING, in the preceding chapter, considered in general the nature of crimes, and puni... more »shments, we are led next, in the order of our distribution, to enquire what persons are, or are not, capable of committing crimes; or, which is all one, who are exempted from the censures of the law upon the commission of those acts, which in other persons would be severely punished. In the process of which enquiry, we must have recourse to particular and special exceptions : for the general rule is, that no person shall be excused from punishment for disobedience to the laws of his country, excepting such as are expressly defined and exempted by the laws themselves. All the several pleas and excuses, which protect the com- mitter of a forbidden act from the punishment which is otherwise annexed thereto, may be reduced to this single consideration, the want or defect of w///. An involuntary act, as it has no claim to merit, so neither can it induce any guilt: the concurrence of the will, when it has it's choice either to door to avoid the fact in question, being the only thing that ren- 21 ] ders human actions either praiseworthy or culpable. Indeed, to make a complete crime cognizable by human laws, there must be both a will and an act. For though, inforo conscien- tiae, a fixed design or will to do an unlawful act, is almost as heinous as the commission of it, yet, as no temporal tribunal can search the heart, or fathom the intentions of the mind, otherwise than as they are demonstrated by outward actions, it therefore cannot punish for what it cannot know. For which reason in all temporal jurisdictions an overt act, orsome open evidence of an intended crime, is necessary in order to demonstrate the depravity of the w...« less