434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



civilized races. On the other hand, probably no instance can be cited 

 where public authority has been exercised in the punishment of other 

 offenses prior to its employment against those of a treasonable nature. 

 Indeed, we can scarcely imagine a phase of society so primitive 

 but that treason if committed would be so punished. The traitor 

 deals his blow not at a particular individual but equally at every mem- 

 ber of his community, each of whom is therefore impelled to retalia- 

 tion by the same natural impulse to which he responds in avenging a 

 personal injury. Consultation and combination among the members 

 of the betrayed community, with a view to revenge, are then as much 

 a matter of course as in the case of an ordinary private injury they 

 are among the family of the injured party. But, if proceeded against 

 only by virtue of this general sense of personal injury, treason would 

 still be destitute of the characteristics of a true crime. It may be 

 said with perfect accuracy that every criminal law has for its object 

 either to preserve the existence of government or to secure the ade- 

 quate discharge of its functions. Many acts involving no moral de- 

 linquency are declared crimes. Others of an immoral nature are not. 

 The one thing that can be said without exception of every crime is 

 this : that it is supposed to militate against either the existence or 

 the functional efficiency of government. Given a government and a 

 recognized governmental function, and a resort to penal sanctions in 

 their aid must always have been an obvious necessity. The tardy 

 growth of criminal law is to be ascribed not to a failure of primitive 

 societies to perceive this, but to their ignorance of what the true func- 

 tions of government are. That which invested treasonable offenses 

 with the character of true crimes before other species of wrong-doing 

 had attained that dignity was the circumstance, now well attested, 

 that after the family and gens the earliest governmental organizations 

 were offensive or defensive military confederations, entered into with 

 sole reference to organic movement against common external foes, 

 and not with a view to internal or police regulations. That this was 

 so no further evidence is required than to consider on the one hand 

 how obvious and universal an expedient, even among savages, military 

 confederation is, and on the other by what slow and unsteady steps 

 and circuitous paths early societies have, as will be hereafter shown, 

 found it necessary to advance toward the conception and inauguration 

 of a general administration of justice. The institution of govern- 

 ments for military purposes involved the immediate rise of those 

 branches of criminal jurisprudence which have for their objects re- 

 spectively to preserve the government and to secure the efficient dis- 

 charge of its military function. There are many of the American 

 Indian tribes among whom the exercise of public authority for the 

 protection of the person or property of individuals from injury is un- 

 known, who yet in times of war organize a temporary government 

 by the election of a military chieftain whose powers within their lim- 



