Commentaries on the Criminal Law Volume 2 (Paperback)

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 VI. BLASPHEMY AND PROFANENESS.1 73-75. Introduction. 76-78. Blasphemy. 79. Profaneness. 80-84. Doctrines common to both. 73. Soope of this Chapter. ? The two common-law offences of blasphemy and profaneness differ only in this, that blasphemy is the word of larger meaning embracing more than the other. And our statutes do not much distinguish between them. Therefore it is deemed best to treat of the two together, in one chapter. 74. Indictable ? Why. ? We have seen,2 that these offences are indictable at the common law. Whether the principle which makes them so is, that they tend to undermine Christianity, which in a certain sense is a part of our common law,8 or that they disturb the peace and corrupt the morals of the community,4 or whether these two principles combine to impart the indictable quality, is a question on which opinions appear not to be quite in harmony. The true view probably is, that, in this instance as in many others, the legal doctrine may be deemed equally to result from any one of several causes; as, from either of the two above mentioned, or from the consideration that reverence toward God and religion ? Christianity being our form of religion ? is essential to man, who is injured in his nature and being when it is impaired; or, still another, that these offences so shock his purer and higher sensibilities as to create an injury to him against which he needs protection, precisely as against an assault.6 i For matter relating to this title, see v. Ruggles, 8 Johns. 290, Kent, C. J., ob- Tol. I. 498. For the pleading, practice, served: The people of this State, in and evidence, see Crim. Proced. II. 123 common with the people of this country, et seq. And see Stat. Crimes, 560. profess the general doctrines of Ch...