Odger's English Common Law

Chapter III.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF CRIMES AND CRIMINALS.
The number of crimes known to our law has increased
enormously during the last hundred years. These additions
have been made from time to time as occasion required, and
very little of the former law has been repealed. Our criminal
law, too, deals with a great variety of different subjects.
No department of public or private life is beyond its ken.
Eecourse is had to legislation whenever the exigencies of
the moment, and the varying interests of the community,
demand the creation of a new offence. What is now a crime
may formerly have been a mere tort, and possibly ere long
may be a tort again. " It is a good rule in criminal juris-
prudence not to multiply crimes, to make as few matters as
possible the subject of the criminal law, and to trust as much
as can be to the operation of the civil law for the prevention
and remedy of wrongs." * But this is not the policy at
present pursued by the State. The result is that our criminal
law is devoid of any scientific arrangement. It is impossible
to classify it in any orderly or systematic method.
To a layman's mind, no doubt, the most striking difference
between crimes would be afforded by the different modes of
trial. The graver crimes are tried by a jury, which deter-
mines all questions of fact subject to directions on points of
law from a judge, chairman or recorder ; they are tried on
an indictment at either Assizes or Quarter Sessions. The less
serious offences are dealt with by magistrates, or by justices
of the peace most of whom have had no legal training ;
they
dispose of them summarily, i.e., then and there without a
j ui7-
1 Per Bramwell, B., in S. v. Middleton (1873)., L. R. 2 0. C. R. at p. 54.
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