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I. Crimes Against the Safety of the Government
The very first title of Part II of the Criminal Code which deals with Crimes and Punishments, is devoted to Crimes against the Safety of the Government. This is not unnatural, as these crimes strike at the very foundation, the very existence of the state.
The Crimes therein dealt with correspond substantially to what in English Law is known as Treason, the crime which the law ranks as the most heinous of all crimes. “The highest Civil crime which, as a member of the community, any man may commit”1 . “The atrocious crime of endeavouring to subvert by violence those institutions which have been ordained in order to secure the peace and happiness of society”2 .
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The word "Treason", derived from the French "trahir" and Latin "tradere" denotes an act of perfidious "betrayal". The offence might, at English Common Law, be committed either by a breach of the faith due to the King from his subjects (High Treason), or even by a breach of that due to one of those subjects from his own inferiors (Petit Treason). But a sufficiently grave breach of the latter form of allegiance could only be committed by the actual slaying of the superior; as when a feudal vassal murdered his Lord, a priest his Bishop, or a wife her husband. Since 18283, such homicides have ceased to differ from ordinary murders; so that High Treason is now the only kind of Treason known to English Law4 .
Treason being, as we have said, the most serious of all Crimes, it ought, therefore, to be the most precisely ascertained: and yet, at Common Law, there was great latitude left to the Judges in determining what was Treason, or not so; whereby the creatures of tyrannical princes had opportunity to create abundance of constructive Treasons; that is, to raise, by fraud and arbitrary constructions, offences into Treason, which were never suspected to be such. The inconveniences arising from this laxity were put an end to by the Statute of Treasons5 which defines what offences should for the future
1 Blackstone 2 Chief Justice Marshall 3 9 Geo. 4 c 31, s. 2 4 Kenny, “Outlines of Criminal Law” 15th Edition, pg. 306 5 25 Edw. 3, St. 5, c. 2
