1818 May 15

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons 2 o

VIII. Penal Securities

Accessory

3

For the reception of the provision made relative to the first of these heads the

English law books have a title in[?] use[?] a particular title, constituted by the

words principal or principals and accessory or accessories.

Accessory is on the face of it a relative term and the word principal is its

correlative. Accomplices the term more in use among non lawyers /in ordinary

discourse/, bears likewise upon the face of it a relative import: it supposes the

existence of more than one sort of offender with reference to which there are other

offenders that are accomplices, but who is not himself an

accomplice. But for the designation this particular sort

of offender, who in the conception of him who speaks who upon the term stands single

while the others stand in crowds no appropriate term is in use, unless it be the word

principal, as above.

{Here then,} Throughout the whole field of delinquency, here, throughout the whole

pit of offences – at any rate if such as {are denominated such for the designation of

which single-worded there are in use so many have} /have/ single worded names as

theft, robbery /burglary/ perjury seduction, rape, murder treason and so forth you

have here in the existence a known and uniform distinction supposed between the

principal offence /of the principal/ on the one part and the offence of an accessory

on the other. Unfortunately no such distinction really has place. Of the offences of

the principal no definition ever has been {or ever can be} given which being applied

to the several species of offence as designated respectively by their legal names

would in every instance be found true

[marginal note:] Neither theft nor robbery are in use among lawyers but both are

confounded under the name of larceny