RESCUE 



RESERVED LIST 



657 



officially propounded to them. Rescripta principis 

 were one of the authoritative sources of the civil 

 Jaw, and consisted of the answers of the emperor 

 to those who consulted him, either as public 

 functionaries or as individuals, on questions of 

 law. They were often applied for l>y private 

 persons, more especially women and soldiers, to 

 solve their doubts or grant them privileges. The 

 rescripts directed to corporate and municipal bodies 

 were known as Pnignutticie sanctiones, a name 

 which has found its way into the public law of 

 Europe (see PRAGMATIC SANCTION). Rescripts 

 mi"ht gradually come to have the force of law, in 

 so far as their determinations in particular cases 

 were of general application. 



Resene, in English law, is the illegal delivery 

 and discharge of a prisoner or of goods out of the 

 custody of the law. If, for example, a tenant 

 whose goods are distrained for rent take them by 

 force from the bailiff, the distrainer has a right of 

 action against the person who rescues the goods. 

 A person who rescues a prisoner accused or con- 

 victed of treason, felony, or misdemeanour is him- 

 self deemed to be guilty of treason, felony, &c. ; 

 the punishment varies with the gravity of the 

 charge. A person who rescues or attempts to 

 rescue a murderer going to execution is liable to 

 penal servitude for life. 



Rcsodarens a natural order of plants, mostly 

 herbaceous, having alternate leaves and terminal 

 spikes of hermaphrodite irregular flowers. There 

 are some forty known species, mostly natives of 

 Europe and the west of Asia, and mostly mere 

 weeds. Weld (q.v.) and Mignonette (q.v.) are the 

 species most worthy of notice. 



Reservation. MENTAL (Lat. reservatio or re- 

 strictio mental is}, the act of reserving or holding 

 back some word or clause which is necessary to 

 convey fully the meaning really intended by the 

 speaker. It differs from equivocation (Lat. eqitivo- 

 catio or iiHi/i/iiliiitiii) in this, that in the latter the 

 words employed, although doubtful, and perhaps 

 not fitted naturally to convey the real meaning of 

 the speaker, are yet, absolutely speaking, and 

 without the addition of any further word or clause, 

 susceptible of that meaning. Few questions in 

 casuistry have excited more controversy, or have 

 been the subject of fiercer recrimination, than that 

 of the lawfulness of equivocation and mental reser- 

 vation. In the celebrated Letters of Pascal (q.v.) 

 against the Jesuits it was one of the most promi- 

 nent and, used as he employed it, the most effective 

 topics ; and Pascal's charges against the Jesuit 

 casuistry of that day have been repeated in almost 

 every popular controversy on the subject which has 

 since arisen. There are several varieties of mental 

 ii'-i-rvation, differing from each other, and all 

 'littering from equivocation. But as regards the 

 morality of the subject all the forms of language 

 i -ilenlated to deceive may be classed together. 

 Mental reservation is of two kinds, purely mental 

 and not purely mental. By the former designation 

 U meant a mental reservation which cannot be 

 detected, whether in the words themselves, or in 

 tin; rlri'iimstances in which they are spoken. Of 

 this kind would be the mental reservation implied 

 if a person, on being asked if he had seen A. B. 

 {whom he really had just seen walking by), were 

 to reply : 'I have not seen him,' meaning 'riding 

 i/i Imrvliitrk.' A 'not purely mental' reservation 

 is that which, although not naturally implied or 

 contained in the worus, may nevertheless be in- 

 ferred or suspected, either from them or the 

 circumstances in which they are used. Of this 

 kind would be the mental reservation of a servant, 

 in giving the ordinary answer to a visitor's inquiry 

 lor his master : ' Not at home,' although his master 

 406 



were really in the house ; or that of a confessor, 

 who, in a country where the privileges of the secret 

 of the confessional are known and admitted, on 

 being asked whether a certain person had com- 

 mitted a crime, which the confessor knew from his 

 confession that he had committed, should answer : 

 ' I do not know,' meaning ' outside of the confes- 

 sional.' And, in general, all such doubtful forms, 

 whether of mental reservation or of equivocation, 

 may be divided into discoverable and undiscover- 

 able. Much of the odium which has been excited 

 against the casuists for their teaching on this lie.ad 

 has arisen from the confusion of their views as to 

 these two classes of mental reservation. 



According to the most approved Catholic author- 

 ities, ' purely mental ' reservations and 'absolutely 

 undiscoverable ' equivocations are held to be in ail 

 cases unlawful, such forms of speech being in truth 

 lies, inasmuch as they have but one real sense, 

 which is not the sense intended by the person who 

 uses them, and hence can only serve to deceive. 

 This doctrine is held by all sound Catholic casuists, 

 and the contradictory doctrine is expressly con- 

 demned by Pope Innocent XI. ( Propp. 26, 27). 

 On the contrary, mental reservations ' not purely 

 mental ' and ' discoverable ' equivocations are held 

 to be not inconsistent with truth, and in certain 

 circumstances, when there is necessity or weighty 

 reason for resorting to them, allowable. An his- 

 torical example of such equivocation or reserva- 

 tion is in the well-known answer of St Athanasius 

 to the question of the party who were in pursuit of 

 him, and who, overtaking him, but not knowing 

 his person, asked what way Athanasius had gone. 

 ' He is not far off,' replied Athanasius, and the 

 party passed on in pursuit; And an ordinary 

 example of discoverable mental reservation is that 

 of a ]>erson who, on being asked by one to whom 

 he could not with safety give a refusal, whether he 

 has any money, should reply : ' No,' meaning, 

 'none to lend to you.' In order, however, to 

 justify the use of these devices of speech, casuists 

 require that there shall be some grave and urgent 

 reason on the speaker's part ; as, for example, the 

 necessity of keeping a state secret, or a secret of 

 the confessional, or of a professional character, or 

 even the confidence entrusted by a friend, or the 

 ordinary and fitting privacy which is required for 

 the comfort and security of domestic life and of 

 the peaceful intercourse of society ; and that the 

 concealed sense of the form of speech employed, 

 although it may be actually undiscovered, and even 

 unlikely to be discovered, may yet be, in all the 

 circumstances, really discoverable. Some Protes- 

 tant moralists admit that in some cases even equivo- 

 cation is permissible ; if any such reservations 

 are allowed it is obvious there must be great 

 difficulty in drawing a line between reservations 

 that are permissible and those that are not. See 

 CASUISTRY ; Liguori's works ; and Cardinal New- 

 man's Apologia. 



Reservation or the Sacrament. See 



LORD'S SUPPER, Vol. VI. p. 717. 



Reserved List, in the Royal Navy, a device 

 which formerly existed for expediting the promo- 

 tion of officers who were still of an age for active 

 service. Und^r certain Orders in Council of 1851 

 and 1853, old officers of good service were selected 

 for promotion to the next grade on the Reserved 

 List. This formed a bar to any further promotion ; 

 and removed the officer from active employment, 

 except in the remote contingency of the Active 

 List being exhausted, when these ' reserved ' officers 

 were liable to be called upon to serve. For all 

 practical purposes, however, the Reserved List was 

 a retired list. The officers placed on it obtained 

 the half-pay of the rank to which they were 



