Section I. Introductory

Writers for centuries past have found it convenient to classify crimes by reference to the various kinds of interests which the respective offences violate. Of the arrangements of the subject-matter which have been made upon this basis the clearest is that of Blackstone's later editor, Serjeant Stephen, who divided them simply into (1) offences against the persons of individuals, (2) offences against the property of individuals, (3) offences against public rights.

Following this last arrangement, our list of crimes must begin with those which affect the security of men's persons—employing here that much abused word, not in its ancient technical legal sense of ‘a subject of rights and duties’, but in the modern meaning of ‘the living body of a human being’. Of all such offences homicide attracts the most attention and, to every student of criminal law, is a crime peculiarly instructive. For it is, as we have seen, in connexion with homicide that metis rea, the basic element of responsibility in our modern system, has been developed.

CLASSIFICATION

We have already had occasion to indicate the uncertainty which besets most important principles at the present time in the law of homicide, owing, as we have observed, to a variety of factors which have operated during the peculiar growth of the common law. In all periods English law has regarded the killing of a human being as a deed of the utmost gravity; but many, if gradual, changes have occurred since the early days when the simple fact that a death could be traced to a man's active conduct involved him in a liability of which no degrees were recognized and for which hardly any excuses were admitted. Nowadays it is the subjective element of mens rea which is of the first importance, imperfectly defined though it still is, and this has brought about the division of homicide into several grades, which must be described and defined separately. These are justifiable homicide, excusable homicide, murder, suicide, manslaughter, infanticide, child destruction.

It is to the working of the social conscience of the English people that all these modifications are due.