PREFACE. NOTWITHSTANDING the great and acknowledged ability of Baron HUME's work, which must always form the foundation of our Criminal Jurisprudence, it must have occurred to every one practically engaged in Justiciary Practice that a treatise was much wanted of more immediate application to the business which actually comes before the Court. The change of manners has consigned to oblivion a great variety of crimes and cases which occupy a conspicuous place in his elaborate Commentaries; while the same cause, joined to the vast increase of criminal business, has brought prominently forward a complete new set of delinquencies, of which little is to be found in the records prior to the last twenty years. In truth, such has been the extraordinary increase of crime of late years, that probably a greater number of cases have been tried since the Peace in 1814 than from the institution of the Court of Justiciary down to that time. To remedy this defect, and render the law, as explained in books, applicable to the daily practice of the Court, is the object of the following work. It was originally my intention to have condensed the whole into one volume, after the manner of Mr BELL'S admirable Principles of the Scotch Municipal Law, but I soon found, notwithstanding the utmost efforts at condensation, that this was impossible. This will not appear surprizing when it is considered that, besides embodying every decision in HUME and BURNETT on the subjects on which it treats of practical application at this time, this Volume contains above a thousand unreported cases, which, of course, could not be referred to without some account of them being given, and above five hundred decisions upon the analogous points in English practice. The present volume, therefore, which is complete within itself, contains the subject of Crimes; and the second volume, which also will be a separate work, will embrace the important subjects of Indictment, Trial, and Evidence. By this arrangement the second volume, which is in a state of great forwardness, will become accessible to that numerous class of practitioners who wish to render themselves familiar with the system of pleading, and the rules of evidence, adopted in a court of such extensive practice, without being embarrassed with the details of criminal delinquencies; while both together will form a complete Treatise on Scotch Criminal Law. I have to express my obligations to my valued friends the DEAN OF FACULTY, Mr D. MACNEIL, Mr ALEXANDER WOOD, Mr ROBERT DUNdas, and Mr GEORGE SMYTHE, for the ready access which they have afforded me to their valuable collections, the importance of which will chiefly appear in the next part of the subject. Mr MACONOCHIE has also most obligingly given me many valuable documents, for which I take this opportunity of returning my best thanks. The unreported cases contained in this volume are almost all those in which I myself was Counsel, and the account of them is taken from the indictments which I drew, or the notes of evidence taken at the time of their trial. WOODVILLE, October 27. 1831. A. ALISON. |