Odger's English Common Law

208 OFFENCES AGAINST THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
may agree to indemnify them against actions brought against them by
reason of their purchase and user of his goods. " It is impossible to be
certain that there are not many other exceptions which have equal
validity." 1
Champerty and maintenance are criminal only in connec-
tion with civil proceedings : misprision and compounding,
only in connection with criminal proceedings, and not with
all criminal proceedings. In the first two cases the offence
consists in unlawfully stirring up or promoting the litigation
in the latter two cases, on the contrary, the offence consists
in attempting to stifle, or refusing to aid in, "the prosecution
of a criminal. The King alone can pardon a crime. It is
the L duty of every subject to assist in bringing to justice
any one guilty of a serious offence. If a felony has been
committed, any private citizen may arrest any person whom
he honestly and reasonably believes to have committed it.
If £he knows that A. B. has committed treason or felony, he
is guilty of misprision if, when opportunity offers, he neither
tries to arrest A. B. himself nor gives information to the
police. It is a worse offence if for some reward to himself
he- agrees not to prosecute the offender : this is called "com-
pounding" Jthe crime, and is a misdemeanour. If he rescues
or conceals a felon or helps him to escape from justice, know-
ing that he is a felon, he becomes, as we have seen, an
accessory after the fact to the original felony. 2
Misprision.
A misprision is the passive omission to do one's duty as
distinct from active- misbehaviour. Thus, if any one knows
of treason and conceals it, though he in no way assents to or
approves of it, he is guilty, as we have seen, 3 of misprision
of treason. The least degree of assent to it would make him
a principal traitor. So any one, who stands by and observes
the [commission of a felony, and makes no attempt to appre-
hend the offender, and gives no information to the police, is
i Per Monlton, L. J., [1908] 1 K. B. at p. 1014.
2 Ante, p. 135.
3 Ante, p. 1">1.
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