CHAP. VIII.: Of the bad Application of the Name of Sacrilege and High-Treason.

IT is likewise a shocking abuse to give the appellation of high-treason to an action that does not deserve it. By an imperial law Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius. This is the second in the Code de crimin. sactil. ^†404 it was decreed, that those who called in question the prince’s judgement, or doubted of the merit of such as he had chosen for a public office, should be prosecuted as guilty of sacrilege Sacrilegii instar est dubitare an is dignus sit quem elegerit imperator. Ibid. This law served as a model to that of Roger in the constitution of Naples, tit. 4. ^†405. Surely it was the cabinet-council and the prince’s favourites who invented that crime. By another law it was determined that whosoever made any attempt to injure the ministers and officers belonging to the sovereign should be deemed

guilty of high-treason, as if he had attempted to injure the sovereign himself The 5th law ad leg. Jul. Maj. ^†406. This law is owing to two princes Arcadius and Honorius. ^†407, remarkable for their weakness; princes who were led by their ministers, as flocks by shepherds; princes who were slaves in the palace, children in the council, strangers to the army; princes, in fine, who preserved their authority only by giving it away every day. Some of those favourites conspired against their sovereigns. Nay, they did more; they conspired against the empire; they called in barbarous nations; and, when the emperors wanted to stop their progress, the state was so enfeebled, as to be under a necessity of infringing the law, and of exposing itself to the crime of high-treason, in order to punish those favourites.

And yet this is the very law which the judge of Monsieur de Cinq-Mars built upon Memoirs of Montresor, tom. 1. ^†408, when, endeavouring to prove that the latter was guilty of the crime of high-treason for attempting to remove cardinal Richelieu from the ministry, he says, “Crimes that aim at the persons of ministers are deemed, by the imperial constitutions, of equal consequence with those which are levelled against the emperor’s own person. A minister discharges his duty to his prince and to his country: to attempt, therefore, to remove him, is endeavouring to deprive the former one of his arms Nam ipsi pars corporis nostri sunt. The same law of the Code ad leg. Jul. Maj. ^†409, and the latter of part of its power.” It is impossible for the meanest tools of power to express themselves in more servile language.

By another law of Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius It is the 9th of the Code Theodos. de falsa moneta. ^†410, false coiners are declared guilty of high-treason.

But is not this confounding the ideas of things? Is not the very horror of high-treason diminished by giving that name to another crime?