Bentham, Theory of Legislation, transl. by Hildreth (5th ed.), pp. 65–66.
As to beneficence, some distinctions are necessary. The law may be extended to general objects, such as the care of the poor; but, for details, it is necessary to depend upon private morality....
However, instead of having done too much in this respect, legislators have not done enough. They ought to erect into an offence the refusal or the omission of a service of humanity when it would be easy to render it, and when some distinct ill clearly results from the refusal; such, for example, as abandoning a wounded man in a solitary road without seeking any assistance for him; not giving information to a man who is negligently meddling with poisons; not reaching out the hand to one who has fallen into a ditch from which he cannot extricate himself; in these, and other similar cases, could any fault be found with a punishment, exposing the delinquent to a certain degree of shame, or subjecting him to a pecuniary responsibility for the evil which he might have prevented?
Livingston, Draft Code of Crimes and Punishments for the State Of Louisiana. Livingston, Complete Works on Criminal Jurisprudence, II, 126–127.
Article 484. Homicide by omission only, is committed by voluntarily permitting another to do an act that must, in the natural course of things, cause his death, without apprising him of his danger, if the act be involuntary, or endeavoring to prevent it if it be voluntary. He shall be presumed to have permitted it voluntarily who omits the necessary means of preventing the death, when he knows the danger, and can cause it to be avoided, without danger of personal injury or pecuniary loss. This rule may be illustrated by the examples put in the last preceding article: if the blind man is seen walking to the precipice by one who knows the danger, can easily apprise him of it, but does not; or if one who knows that a glass contains poison, sees him about to drink it, either by mistake or with intent to destroy himself, and makes no attempt to prevent him: in these cases the omission amounts to homicide.[[120]]
Macaulay, Notes to Draft of Indian Penal Code. Penal Code Prepared by the Indian Law Commissioners.[[121]] Chapter xviii [page 76]. Of Offences Affecting the Human Body. Of Offences Affecting Life.
294. Whoever does any act or omits what he is legally bound to do, with the intention of thereby causing, or with the knowledge that he is likely thereby to cause, the death of any person, and does by such act or omission cause the death of any person, is said to commit the offence of “voluntary culpable homicide.”
Note M.[[122]] On Offences Against the Body. Notes to Draft of Penal Code, 53–56; Macaulay’s Complete Works (English ed., 1875), vol. VII, pp. 493–497; Morgan and McPherson, Indian Penal Code, 225, 226, notes.
The first class of offences against the body consists of those offences which affect human life; and highest in this first class stand those offences which fall under the definition of voluntary culpable homicide.
This important part of the law appears to us to require fuller explanation than almost any other.