[336]. Reg. v. Ellis, (1899) 1 Q. B. 230.
[337]. The question is fully discussed in the case of Reg. v. Keyn, 2 Ex. D. 63, in which the captain of a German steamer was tried in England for manslaughter by negligently sinking an English ship in the Channel and drowning one of the passengers. One of the minor questions in the case was that of the place in which the offence was committed. Was it on board the English ship, or on board the German steamer, or on board neither of them? Four of the judges of the Court for Crown Cases Reserved, namely, Denman, J., Bramwell, B., Coleridge, C.J., and Cockburn, C.J., agreed that if the offence had been wilful homicide it would have been committed on the English ship. Denman, J., and Coleridge, C.J., applied the same rule to negligent homicide. Cockburn, C.J., doubted as to negligent homicide. Bramwell, B., said (p. 150): “If the act was wilful, it is done where the will intends it should take effect; aliter when it is negligent.” For a further discussion of the matter, see Stephen’s History of Criminal Law, II. pp. 9–12, and Oppenhoff’s annotated edition of the German Criminal Code (13th ed. 1896), p. 28. The German doctrine is that an act is committed in the place where it is begun. See also Terry, Principles of Anglo-American Law, pp. 598–606, and Edmundson v. Render, (1905) 2 Ch. 320.
[338]. Northey Stone Co. v. Gidney, (1894) 1 Q. B. 99.
[339]. If the law dates the commission of a wrong from the completion of it, it follows that there are cases in which a man may commit a wrong after his death. If A. excavates his own land so as to cause, after an interval, the subsidence of the adjoining land of B., there is no wrong done until the subsidence happens; Backhouse v. Bonomi, 9 H. L. C. 503; Darley Main Colliery Co. v. Mitchell, 11 A. C. 127. What shall be said, then, if A. is dead in the meantime? The wrong, it seems, is not done by his successors in title: Hall v. Duke of Norfolk, (1900) 2 Ch. 493; Greenwell v. Low Beechburn Colliery, (1897) 2 Q. B. 165. The law, therefore, must hold either that there is no wrong at all, or that it is committed by a man who is dead at the date of its commission.
[340]. Holmes, Common Law, p. 53: “Intent will be found to resolve itself into two things; foresight that certain consequences will follow from an act, and the wish for those consequences working as a motive which induces the act.”
[341]. It is to be noticed, however, that the part which was intended may constitute in itself an independent intentional wrong included in the larger and unintentional wrong of which it forms a part. Intentionally to discharge firearms in a public street is a wilful wrong, if such an act is prohibited by law. But accidentally to kill a person by the intentional discharge of firearms in a public street is a wrong of negligence.
[342]. See however § 143, infra, as to constructive intent. Wrongful intent is sometimes imputed in law when there is none in fact.
[343]. For a discussion of this matter, see Ex parte Hill, 23 Ch. D. 695, per Bowen, L. J., at p. 704; also Ex parte Taylor, 18 Q. B. D. 295.
[344]. See for example D. 4. 3. 1. pr.
[345]. It is to malice in one only of these two uses that the well-known definition given in Bromage v. Prosser (4 Barn & C. 247; 28 R. R. 241) is applicable: “Malice in common acceptation means ill-will against a person; but in its legal sense it means a wrongful act done intentionally, without just cause or excuse.” See, to the same effect, Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor Gow & Co., 23 Q. B. D. at p. 612, per Bowen, L. J.; and Allen v. Flood, (1898) A. C. at p. 94, per Lord Watson.