I come now to the 9th section, and I will read that section:
"And be it further enacted, that if any citizen should commit any piracy or robbery aforesaid, or any act of hostility against the United States or any citizen thereof, on the high seas, under color of any commission of any foreign Prince or State, or on pretence of authority from any person, such offender shall, notwithstanding the pretence of any such authority, be deemed, adjudged, and taken to be a pirate, felon, and robber, and on being convicted thereof shall suffer death."
This section applies particularly to the citizens of the United States. Now, I contend that this section does not change the character of the offence. It differs only by stating that the commission shall not form a pretext. The words "piracy and robbery" explain the words "acts of hostility," which follow immediately afterwards. Where particular words are followed by general words, the latter are held as applying to persons and things of the same kind as those which precede. The coupling of words together shows that they are to be understood in the same sense. Take these two principles with the other principle, that penal statutes are to receive a strict interpretation. The general words of a penal statute must be restrained for the benefit of him against whom the penalty is inflicted.
To the same effect is the case of The United States vs. Bevins (5 Wheaton):
"Penal statutes, however, are taken strictly and literally only in point of defining and setting down the crime and the punishment; and not literally in words that are but circumstances and conveyance in the putting of the case.
"Thus, though by the statute 1 Ed. 6, C. 12, it was enacted that those who were convicted of stealing horses should not have the benefit of clergy, the Judges conceived that this did not extend to him that should steal but one horse, and therefore procured a new Act for that purpose in the following year.
"But upon the Statute of Gloucester, that gives the action of waste against him that holds pro termino vitæ vel annorum, if a man holds but for a year he is within the statute; while, if the law be that for a certain offence a man shall lose his right hand, and the offender hath had his right hand before cut off in the wars, he shall not lose his left hand, but the crime shall rather pass without the punishment which the law assigned than the letter of the law shall be extended.
"A penal law, then, shall not be extended by equity; that is, things which do not come within the words shall not be brought within it by construction.
"The law of England does not allow of constructive offences, or of arbitrary punishments. No man incurs a penalty unless the act which subjects him to it is clearly both within the spirit and the letter of the statute imposing such penalty.
"'If these rules are violated,' said Best, C.J., in the case of Fletcher vs. Lord Sondes, 3 Bing., 580, 'the fate of accused persons is decided by the arbitrary discretion of Judges, and not by the express authority of the laws. 2d Dwarris Stat., 634.'