Excerpt from Commentaries on the Law of Statutory Crimes: Including the Written Laws and Their Interpretation in General, What Is Special to the Criminal Law, and the Specific Statutory Offenses as to Both Law and Procedure The volume here presented, supplementing the two vol umes entitled Criminal Law, and the two on the law of Pleading and Evidence and the Practice in Criminal Cases, called, for short, Criminal Procedure, completes a series ccv ering the whole field of American criminal law, criminal evi dence, criminal pleading, and criminal practice, both at the common law and under the statutes. In the construction of the series, and in the printing of the successive editions, there have been some changes of matter from one work to another, all duly pointed out when they occurred. As the volumes stand in the later editions, the four which precede this, while mingling in their explanations the written law with the nu written, are silent on the questions discussed in this volume. These are an exposition of the general principles of statutory interpretation, which, since they are in the main the same in criminal cases and in civil, extends necessarily into the civil department; elucidations of the principles of interpretation special to the criminal law, with their specific applications; such topics as the statute of limitations in criminal causes, pleadings upon private statutes and municipal by-laws, and some others of the like kind; and, finally, discussions of the offenses which are purely or in substance statutory, in distino tion from more statutory extensions of common-law crimes. As to the last-named particular, Book V, entitled Statutory Extensions of Common-law Offenses, might seem to occupy an exceptional position. But the statutes discussed in it are such as, while analogous to some common-law inhibitions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.