Overt act

“ That any overt act, so marked in its character as to show an intention to elude the vigilance of the master or his agent, and which is calculated to attain such an object, is a harbouring of the fugitive within the statute. ”

“ After the failure of other means, punishment should be resorted to. Inasmuch as the punishment should be for the purpose of making the pupil realize that it is the consequence of his deed returning on himself, it should always be administered for some particular act of his, and this should be specified. The "overt act" is the only thing which a man can be held accountable for in a court of justice ”

“ It may be that in some cases the overt acts, sufficient to prove giving of aid and comfort, will fall short of showing intent to betray and that questions will then be raised as to permissible methods of proof that we do not reach in this case. ”

“ It would, indeed, have been impossible to follow in all respects the customs which prevail with us, for the crimes with which men are charged in our courts are mere overt acts, as the lawyers call them, that is, acts which regard the outward behavior; such as the acts of striking, maiming, stealing, and so forth. ”

“ I will not admit that because a majority of this House are in favor of the claims, and desire a prompt decision without debate, it is evidence that “unprincipled men have acquired the ascendency, and knowing themselves to be in the commission of wrong they are silent.” Is my colleague aware of the extent of this doctrine? When unprincipled men, said he, acquire the ascendency, they act in concert and are silent—silence and concert, then, are to him proofs of corrupt motive. ”

“ In the former case there is a choice and therefore an act, no less when the motive commonly is recognized as very strong or even generally overpowering, than when it is one which would affect the particular person only, and not the public at large. ”

“ And if now it is held that something more must be done—if, notwithstanding perpetual explanations and denunciations and exhortations, the misconduct is so great that society is endangered, why, after all this insistance has failed, is it expected that more insistance will succeed? ”

“ In the period of madness, more or less enduring, of the victim of the Great Powers' policy, somebody who is innocent usually suffers. Sometimes the Powers know it, oftener they do not. Either way it does not worry them. They set about doing their best to destroy, and that is their whole duty. ”

“ I look around me with doubt, agitation, and dismay; because, whilst I venerate those to whom the sway of a part of a state may be said to be intrusted, I cannot but yield to the conviction that the abuse of power must be felt to be an overstep of authority in the best intentioned of the Magistracy. ”

“ The common topics for the advocate for the defence to employ are, a complaint of that calamity which has taken place by no fault of his, but in consequence of some overruling power, and a complaint also of the power of fortune and the powerless state of men, and an entreaty that the judges should consider his intentions, and not the result. And in the employment of all these topics it will be desirable that there should be inserted a complaint of his own unhappy condition, and indignation at the cruelty of his adversaries. ”

“ And this you did, not from a misguided sense of duty towards your country, but in wanton and impure spirit, to be rid of the surveillance of one who had your welfare at heart, and who tried to prevent your leading the immoral life which had become a public scandal, and which has now brought you before this court of justice, to answer to a charge of wantonness, impurity, defamation of character, and corruption of public morals. ”

“ If he is “outside” and so cut off in mind and spirit and imagination from all his fellows, what is to them a crime will bear to him no immoral aspect whatever. For what is a crime? Something that we agree must not go unpunished. ”

“ They have taken the law into their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. They have done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? You have power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of the land. ”

“ She had elected to pay with her life for her treason against him and his family. She would be arraigned before a tribunal which would inevitably condemn her. Oh! the pity of it all!
One moment's passionate emotion, a lifelong superstition and mistaken sense of duty, and now this endless misery, this terrible atonement of a wrong that could never be undone. ”

“ A word of severe blame from the master for grave contravention of rules set the spark to the smouldering fire of discontent. A short, thick-set man, with tousled red hair and tawny beard, on whom the blame had fallen, threw down his tool at de Maurel's feet.
"Blame? Blame?" he snarled, showing his yellow [Pg 132] teeth like an ill-conditioned cur, "nothing but blame in this place of malediction. Are we beasts that we should be made to work and risk our lives for a tyranny that would make a slave of every free citizen?" ”

“ The idea that they have the incidental power to issue an unlimited amount of obligations of such a character as to be irretrievably binding on the people, without a shadow of consideration in return, is the growth of a modern misconception of their true object and character. ”

“ What does it avail to expose the absurd contrivance, or pernicious tendency of measures, if the man, who advises or executes, shall be suffered not only to escape with impunity, but even to preserve his power, and insult us with the favour of his Sovereign. ”

“ It is possible for a good man undergoing unjust punishment to be dignified, even in the pillory; and so it was with Overton. His singular beauty, the mildness of his countenance, the uncomplaining fortitude with which he submitted to an odious and miserable position, the remembrance of his past military services, showed him to be every inch a man. ”

“ One short extract will suffice:—
"The Master said, 'There are three thousand offences against which the five punishments are directed, and there is not one of them greater than being unfilial.
"'When constraint is put upon a ruler, that is the disowning of his superiority; when the authority of the sages is disallowed, that is the disowning of all law; when filial piety is put aside, that is the disowning of the principle of affection. ”

“ If by my conduct I have incurred any censure or violated any law, or menaced the safety or the life or property of any man in or out of the institution, why in the name of reason and of common sense do not these gentlemen proceed in the regular way, to secure exemption from the fear of danger? ”

“ The maintenance of authority is like the preservation of a siring of beads—break but the "silken cord on which they hang," and the pearls are scattered in disorder, if not irretrievably lost. By suffering the rule of obedience to be set aside, an endless catalogue of evil tempers, vexations, disappointments, artifices, mean subterfuges, and even the worst of all, bribery—the bribery of self-interested endearments—are allowed to take the place of that steady, calm, and undeviating submission, which costs no pain, and requires no sacrifice, simply because it is habitual. ”

“ The violation, then, consists in using a power, granted for one object, to advance another, and that by a sacrifice of the original object. It is, in a word, a violation of perversion, the most dangerous of all, because the most insidious, and difficult to resist. ”

“ To censure guilt, my lords, is undoubtedly necessary, and to inquire into the conduct of men in power, incontestably just; but by the laws both of heaven and earth, the means as well as the end are prescribed, rectum recte, legitimum legitime faciendum; we must not only propose a good end in our conduct, but must attain it by that method which equity directs, and the law prescribes. ”

“ We shall reflect that he already bears, or will bear, the whole penalty of his error; if he spoils his life by mismanagement, we shall not, for that reason, desire to spoil it still further: instead of wishing to punish him, we shall rather endeavour to alleviate his punishment, by showing him how he may avoid or cure the evils his conduct tends to bring upon him. ”

“ Let any man then ask himself, Suppose a law is passed by which I am ruined! Have I interest enough to overturn the government of my country? If I have, we still may be a ruined people, and myself ruined among the rest. ”

“ The thin veil is torn off from their motives; an act of "strict justice" is seen at once to be the gratification of intolerance, or spite, or revenge. Proctors declare that thousands of wills are being destroyed and have been destroyed. ”

“ Again, how many originally upright and faultless characters when raised to power, have been quickly corrupted by their freedom from restraint and by the temptations of a court, and have plunged headlong into every form of vice. ”

“ Even when penal laws are relaxed, social ostracism will have a similar, though perhaps a weaker effect. Prizes offered to one form of opinion, and losses inflicted on others, will necessarily make a difference in their relative success. ”

“ A privilege so dangerous as that of appeal, is, therefore, strictly prohibited; and any one exercising it, runs a fearful hazard. Nevertheless, when a slave has nerve enough to exercise it, and boldly approaches his master, with a well-founded complaint against an overseer, though he may be repulsed, and may even have that of which he complains repeated at the time, and, though he may be beaten by his master, as well as by the overseer, for his temerity, in the end the policy of complaining is, generally, vindicated by the relaxed rigor of the overseer's treatment. ”

“ It is thus that actions of men, whom in themselves we reckon bad, are 'overruled' for good. There is nothing mysterious or unintelligible in such 'overruling.' There is nothing in the effect which we ascribe to the 'overruling,' any more than in any effect belonging to the ordinary course of nature, which there was not in the cause as it really was and as we should see it to be if we fully understood it. ”

“ Intent, of course, often makes the difference in the law. An act otherwise excusable or carrying minor penalties may grow to an abhorrent thing if the evil intent is present. We deal here, however, not with ordinary acts, but with speech, to which the Constitution has given a special sanction. ”

“ The 'physical' sanctions are such pleasures and pains as follow a given course of conduct independently of the interference of any other human or supernatural being; the 'political' those which are annexed by the action of the legislator; the 'moral or popular' those which are annexed by other individuals not acting in a corporate capacity ”

“ Overlooking, however, this incongruity of two equally authoritative rules, let us proceed to consider what dangerous latitude of interpretation is allowed to the followers of either of them. Those who believe that the merit or demerit of each separate action depends on that action's separate consequences, need seldom be at a loss for a pretext for committing the most heinous of crimes. ”

“ All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive to this fundamental rule, and of fatal tendency. ”

“ These deplorable states of feeling, in any people who have emerged from savage life, are, no doubt, usually the consequence of previous bad government, which has taught them to regard the law as made for other ends than their good, and its administrators as worse enemies than those who openly violate it. ”

“ It is not that of the two courses we know that one is in the long run the best, and the other more immediately tempting. We have a sense of obligation irrespective of consequence, the violation of which is followed again by a sense of self-disapprobation, of censure, of blame. ”

“ To make laws that man can not and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. ”

“ Whether the regulation be formally made by a legislature, or informally made by society at large—whether the penalty for disobedience be imprisonment, or frowns and social ostracism, he sees to be a question of no moment. ”

“ If we have taken in deal, or in any other way, that which did not belong to us, we shall promptly restore. If we have wronged another in his character, we shall hasten to make it right. “Whoso keepeth the whole law, and yet offendeth in one point, is guilty of all.” ”

“ He would declare that you were trampling on the fallen if you told him that wrong could be entitled to no privilege, no protection whatever—to no protection, till it was admitted by itself, admitted by all, to be wrong. ”

“ He is necessarily, also, called into action in cases when all the worst passions of our nature—our hatred and revenge, and our self-interest—are set in motion. Consider the mischief which might be constantly done on a grand scale in society, if the vast majority of attorneys and solicitors were not honorable, and able men! ”

“ Our will is therefore, that all who will countenance any other meetings of his subjects than we have allowed, or connive at them, shall be prosecuted according to the utmost severity of our laws made against them, which we leave in full force and vigour, notwithstanding of all the premises. ”