HIGH TREASON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1607, 7 September 1916, Page 4

HIGH TREASON.

EXECUTED IN PUBLIC

IN MEDIAEVAL TIMES

In view of the trial and execution of Sir Roger Casement on a charge of high treason, it may .be of interest to briefly survey some of the* peculiarities relating to the law of treason.

In mediaeval times an indictment for high treason was a powerful weapon for the Crown to wield against its two great rivals, the church and the baronage. Judges, Professor Kenny points out, in their attention for their masters’ interests expanded the definition of high treason until it became a most, comprehensive offence, including even hunting deer in the king’s forests.

In the reign of Edward 111., one John Gerbage, of Royston, laid hands on one William, of Bottisford, and would not release him until he had paid a fine of £3O. This act ot unlawful imprisonment was construed as an act of treason, on the plea of its being “an accroaching of, the royal power,” At this tin 1 barons took action, and succeeded in confining the law of treason within definite limits by the enactment of 1352. METHODS OF TRIAL.

From recent events, everyone knows tlnit in the time of rebellion the Crown nmy try traitors by martial law. There are four other procedures for the trial of treason — viz., impeachment, trial of a peer by his peers, and trial by a judge of the High Court with jury at assizes, and trial at bar by three judges find a jury. In regard to treason, judicial legislation has been active, and the legal development has to a great 'extent been effected, not by Parliament, but by the judges. An attempt to raise a rebellion in a remote* colony has been held to show a compassing of the king’s death, though he was thousands of miles away from the seat of the disturbance. Passages in the manuscript of a sermon which was never preached found in the study of the Rev. Edward Peachman sufficed for his conviction in 1615; and Algernon Sidney suffered, in 1(583, on account of views expressed in a manuscript treatise on “Sovereignty,” discovered in his house. It cannot, however, be said that these two instances are to be regarded as unassailable examples of the law of treason, for Peacham died in goal, and Parliament reversed, after his execution, the sentence passed upon Sidnev.

The covert act of imprisoning the king has, according to Kenney, been held as sufficient evidence of a compassing of the death of the sovereign, on the Machiavelian proposition that “between the prisons and the graves of princes the distance is verv small.”

THE ONLY POSSIBLE SENTENCE.

K is generally known that the only sentence following a conviction for-treason is that of death. The law is thus stated by Sir .lames Eitzjames Stephen “Everyone who is convicted -of high treason must be sentenced to lie hanged by the neck until he is dead; but His Majesty may (if the offender be a man) direct by a warrant signed by one of his principal Secretaries of State, that instead thereof such offender’s head shall be severed from his bodv whilst alive.”

The parenthetical words, “if the offender be a man,” require explanation. Prior to the time of George 111. women were liable to be burnt alive for treason, but in the thirteenth year of this monarch’s reign the punishment was modified, and the act applies to women only. Another point of interest, to which the learned judge, just cited, calls attention, is. that the Act 31 of the late Queen Victoria, providing that executions shall take place within gaols, does not apply to cases of treason. Indeed, says Sir James, sections 2 and 16 taken together exclude its operation in such cases, and the execution would have to lake place in public. The old form of sentence and execution hpd many attendant horrors. Instead of being taken in a cart to the place of execution, the traitor was drawn thither on a hurdle, hanged only partially, cut down alive, anod then disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered.