The Crime against Nature (masturbation, sodomy and bestiality)
Table of Contents
Religion, morality, and civil government equally condemn crimes against nature.
As a natural circumstance of this crime is secrecy, there are frequent instances of its having been punished by legislators upon the deposition of a child. This was opening a very wide door to slander.
Procopius says that Justinian published a law against such crimes.
He ordered an inquiry against those who were guilty of it after the enacting of that law, but even before.
The deposition of a single witness , sometimes of a child, sometimes of a slave, was sufficient, especially ag ainst such as were rich, and against those of the green faction.
These 3 crimes which are oddly punished with fire:
- Witchcraft
This does not exist.
- Heresy
This is susceptible of infinite distinctions, interpretations, and limitations
- Crime against nature (masturbation, sodomy and bestiality.)
This is often obscure and uncertain.
This will never make any great progress in society, unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
For example among the Greeks, their youths performed all their exercises naked.
In the Asiatics, particular persons have many women whom they despise, while others can have none at all.
Let there be no customs preparatory to this crime; let it, like every other violation of morals, be severely proscribed by the civil magistrate.
Nature will soon defend or resume her rights. Nature, t hat fond, that indulgent, parent, has strewed her pleasures with a bounteous hand.
While she fills us with delights, she prepares us, by means of our issue, (in whom we see ourselves, as it were, reproduced,) she prepare s us, I say, for future satisfactions of a more exquisite kind than those very delights.
Chapter 7: The Crime of High-Treason
In Chinese law, whoever shews any disrespect to the emperor is to be punished with death.
They do not mention in what this disrespect consists. And so everything may furnish a pretext to take away a man’s life, and to exterminate any family whatsoever.
Two persons of that country, who were employed to write the court-gazette, having inserted some circumstances relating to a certain fact that were not true, it was pretended that to tell a lie in the courtgazette was a disrespect shewn to the court; in consequenc e of which they were put to death.
A prince of the blood having inadvertently made some mark on a memorial signed with the red pencil by the emperor, it was determined tha t he had behaved disrespectfully to the sovereign; which occasioned one of the most terrible persecutions against that family that ever was recorded i n history.
If the crime of high-treason be indeterm inate, this alone is sufficient to make the government degenerate into arbi trary power. I shall descant more largely on this subject when I come to treat of the co mposition of laws.
Chapter 8: The bad Application of the Name of Sacrilege and High-Treason
IT is likewise a shocking abuse to give the appellation of high-treason to an action that does not deserve it. By a n imperial law it was decreed, that those who called in question the princes judge ment, or doubted of the merit of such as he had chosen for a public office, should be prosecuted as guilty of sacrilege.
Surely it was the cabinet-council and the princes favourites who invented that crime. By another law it was determined that whosoever made any attempt to injure the ministers and offi cers belonging to the sovereign should be deemed guilty of high-treason, as if he had attempted to injure the sovereign himself.
This law is owing to two princes*, remarkable for their w eakness; princes who were led by their ministers, as flocks by shepherds; p rinces who were slaves in the palace, children in the council, strangers to the army; princes, in fine, who preserved their authority only by giving i t away every day. Some of those favourites conspired against their sovereig ns. Nay, they did more; they conspired against the empire; they called in b arbarous nations; and, when the emperors wanted to stop their progress, the state was so enfeebled, as to be under a necessity of infringing the law, and of exposing itself to the crime of high-treason, in order to punish tho se favourites.
And yet this is the very law which the j udge of Monsieur de Cinq-Mars built uponE280A0, when, endeavouring to prove that the latter wa s guilty of the crime of high-treason for attempting to remove cardinal Ric helieu from the ministry, he says, Crimes that aim at the persons of ministers are deemed, by the imperial constitutions, of equal consequenc e with those which are levelled against the emperor’s own person.
A minister discharges his duty to his prince and to his country: to attempt, therefore, to remove him, is endeavouring to deprive the former one of his arms, and th e latter of part of its power.
It is impossible for the meanest to ols of power to express themselves in more servile language.
By another law of Valentinian, Theodosiu s, and Arcadius, false coiners are declared guilty of high-treason.
But is not this confo unding the ideas of things? Is not the very horror of high-treason diminish ed by giving that name to another crime?
Chapter 9= The same Subject continued.
PAULINUS having written to the emperor Alexander, that he was preparing to prosecute, for high-treason, a judge who had decided contrary to his edict, the emperor answered, that under his reign there was no such thing as indirect high-treason*.
Faustinian wrote to the same emperor, th at, as he had sworn by the princes life never to pardon his slave, he found himself thereby obliged to perpetuate his wrath, lest he should incur the guilt of la majestas; upon whic h the emperor made answer, E2809CYour fears are groundless, and you are a stranger to my principles.
It was determined, by a senatus-consultu m, that whoso ever melted down any of the emperors statues, which happened to be rejected, should not be deemed guilty of high-treason. The emperors, Sever us and Antoninus, wrote to Pontius, that those who sold unconsecrated statues of the empero r should not be charged with high-treason.
The same princes wrote to Julius Cassianus, that, if a person, in flinging a stone, should by chance strike one of the emperor’s statues, he should not be liable to a prosecu tion for high-treason.
The Julian law requires this sort of limitations; for, in virtu e of this law, the crime of high-treason was charged, not only upon those who melted down the emperors statues, but likewise on those who c ommitted any such like action*, which made it an arbitrary crime. When a number of crimes of lC3A6sa majestas had been established, they were obliged to distinguish the several sorts.
Hence Ulpian, the civilian, after saying that the accusation of lC3A6sa majestas did not die with the criminal, adds, that this does not relate toE280A0 all the treasonable acts established by the Julian law, but only to that which implies an atte mpt against the empire or against the emperorE28099s life.
Chapter 10: The same Subject continued.
A law was passed in England, under Henry 8th, by which punished with high-treason anyone who predicted the king’s death.
This law was extremely vague. The terror of despotic power is so great, that it recoils upon those who exercise it.
In this king’s last illness the physicians would not venture to say he was in danger; and surely they acted very right.