EXCOMMUNICATION EXECUTION. 



123 



incapable of ever holding any office or place of trust 

 under his majesty. No person holding any office of 

 excise is to deal in any sort of goods subject to the 

 excise laws. A.iy person bribing or offering to 

 bribe any officer of excise shall forfeit 000 ; 

 and every officer accepting such bribe, or doing, 

 conniving at, or permitting any act or thing whereby 

 any of the provisions of the excise laws may be 

 evaded or broKen, shall forfeit 500, and be de- 

 clared incapable of ever after serving his majesty in 

 any capacity whatever. But if any of the parties to 

 such illegal transactions shall inform against the 

 other, before any proceedings thereupon shall have 

 been instituted, he slmll be indemnified against the 

 penalties and disabilities imposed for such offences. 

 It is lawful for any officer to enter any building or 

 other place, used for carrying on any trade subject 

 to tlie excise, either by night or by day, (but if by 

 night, in the presence of a constable or peace officer), 

 to inspect the same, &c. And upon an officer mak- 

 ing oath that he has cause to suspect that goods 

 forfeited under the excise acts are deposited in any 

 private house or place, two commissioners of excise, 

 or one justice of the peace, may grant warrant to 

 the officer to enter such house or place, (if in the 

 night, in the presence of a constable,) to search for 

 and seize such forfeited goods. Specimen books may 

 be left by the officers on the premises of persons 

 subject to the excise laws ; and any one who shall 

 remove or deface such books shall be liable to a 

 penalty of 200. Goods fraudulently removed or 

 secreted, in order to avoid the duty, to be forfeited; 

 and every person assisting in such removal shall for- 

 feit and lose treble the value of such goods, or 

 100, at the discretion of the commissioners. All 

 persons who shall oppose, molest, &c., any officer of 

 excise in the execution of his duty, sliall respectively, 

 for every sucli offence, forfeit %QQ. 



EXCOMMUNICATION ; the exclusion of a per- 

 son from a society, and depriving him of its fellow- 

 ship ; more particularly, the exclusion of a Christian 

 from the church. Some kind of excommunication 

 lias existed wherever societies have existed secular, 

 spiritual, literary, &c. The Jews practised excom- 

 munication, viz., an exclusion from communion in 

 the benefits of religious worship with the people. 

 In the early Christian church, excommunication 

 was exercised by the whole community, and the 

 power of expelling unworthy members must have 

 been highly necessary in so delicate a situation as 

 that in which the first Christians were placed. By 

 degrees, the right of excommunication became con- 

 fined to the bishops ; and, both in the Greek and 

 Roman Catholic churches, the subject of excommu- 

 nication became more and more distinctly settled by 

 treaties and decrees. A person excommunicated 

 from the Roman Catholic church is put out of the 

 communion of the faithful ; viz., he cannot hear 

 mass, partake of the Lord's supper, nor attend public 

 prayers, &c. ; no person is allowed to have any 

 communication with him except in case of necessity. 

 (1'olitical relations, for instance, may allow such 

 communication; as Francis I. of France always 

 transacted business with the excommunicated Henry 

 VIII. of England.) Since the time of pope Gre- 

 gory IX., there have been two kinds of excommuni- 

 cation in the Roman church the greater and the 

 less. The former excludes the person from all com- 

 munion with the faithful, and from the privilege of 

 Christian burial. Subjects were absolved from alle- 

 giance to their sovereign, who lay under the greater 

 excommunication, nay, were forbidden to obey him. 

 But, in more modern times, many Catholic ecclesi- 

 astical writers have maintained that, as an excom- 

 municated private person is not prohibited by civil 



governments from managing his worldly affairs, so 

 the excommunication of a prince ought not to have 

 any influence on matters of political administration. 

 (See, for instance, the abbe Fleury's Discours stir 

 V Histoire ecclesiastigue, depuis I An 600 jttsquu 

 VAn 1200.) Besides, the spirit of the age is such as 

 not to allow an excommunication to have the same 

 influence on the relations between princes and people 

 as in the middle ages. At that time, the pope ex- 

 communicated even whole cities, provinces, and 

 countries. An excommunication was then consi- 

 dered the heaviest visitation which the country 

 could suffer. All religious services ceased ; there 

 was no regular burial, no ringing of the bells, &c. 

 Relics and crucifixes, and ail other things which 

 had been full of religious comfort to the believer, 

 were supposed to lose their spiritual power. Gre- 

 gory V. first pronounced such an excommunication 

 against France in 998, because king Robert would 

 not separate himself from his lawful wife Bertha, 

 who was related to him in the fourth degree. 

 Robert was at last obliged to yield. Still more im- 

 portant was the excommunication issued against 

 England by Innocent III., because king John refused 

 the payment of the tribute called Peter-pence, and 

 the acknowledgment of a right in the pope to con- 

 fer the investiture of the English bishoprics. The 

 king was obliged to yield, and received back his 

 kingdom as a papal fief. No country, however, has 

 suffered more from excommunications or interdicts, 

 as these general excommunications of a whole coun- 

 try are called, than Germany. Many of the emper- 

 ors were excommunicated, and many revolutions 

 produced in consequence. The latest excommuni- 

 cation of a sovereign was that of Napoleon, by Pius 

 VII., in 1809. The lesser excommunication has two 

 effects, viz., exclusion from the sacraments and from 

 ecclesiastical offices. 



Excommunication cannot be said to have been 

 abolished by the reformation. Luther says, for 

 instance, that a person not receiving the Lord's sup- 

 per during a whole year, should be separated from 

 the faithful; nothing, however, of the severity of the 

 greater excommunication, and the anathema, is 

 retained. In the states of Germany, however, 

 excommunication is nowhere practised at the present 

 time among Protestants. It would be thought an 

 undue exercise of power by the clergy, especially as 

 the Protestant sovereigns declare themselves to be 

 the head of the church in their respective countries, 

 and would consider the punishment of their subjects 

 by the clergy under them as an infringement of their 

 prerogatives. In the church of England, both the 

 less and the greater excommunication exist. The 

 less excludes the party from participation in the sacra- 

 ments, the greater Irom the company of all Chris- 

 tians. The sentence is attended also with the loss of 

 many civil rights. In Scotland, immoral conduct 

 among the members of most congregations may pro- 

 duce exclusion from church privileges ; but this 

 excommunication is not considered as affecting the 

 spiritual welfare of the individual. 



The Catholics use the phrase fulminating an 

 excommunication, to signify the solemn pronouncing 

 of an excommunication after several admonitions. 

 The ceremonies attending such fulmination are terri 

 ble, and do not seem to have been used before the 

 llth century. The excommunication pronounced in 

 this way is generally called anathema. 



EXECUTION, in law, is a judicial writ grounded 

 on a judgment of the court, by which the execution 

 is issued, and is granted for the purpose of carrying 

 the judgment into effect, being an order in the name 

 of the supreme power of the state, or the executive 

 branch of the government, attested by the court, to 



