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the jurisdiction of this court to adjudicate upon
offences committed at sea depends, was in its effect
parallel with the statute of Henry VIII in England,
and, therefore, that as the later act authorised
the trial both of misdemeanours and of felonies, the
act of Henry VIII might be correctly construed in the
same sense. I at that time supposed that the defini-
tions of piracy contained in textbooks relating to
English criminal law represented merely the personal
opinion of each writer. The se opinions, with few
exceptions, necessitate that the offence of piracy
in respect of which an accused person became liable
to conviction in the courts of the realm, must
amount in its constituent acts to a felony if those
acts had occurred upon land. The standard definition
is contained in East's "Pleas of the Crown" (volume II,
p.796):
"The offence of piracy by common law consists
in committing those acts of robbery and depredation
upon the high seas which if committed upon land,
would have amounted to felony there." I then
regarded this definition as the ipse dixit of the
scholar and I was lead to the conclusion that though
no conviction has been recorded under the statute
of Henry VIII unless for felony, yet that fact was
merely accidental. The offence charged against
the prisoners in these proceedings if committed
on land would have amounted to an assault with intent
to rob. That offence in the reign of Henry VIII was,
under the common law, a misdemeanour and not a
fel ony; and was made a felony by statute during the
eighteenth century (see 17 Geo. II, c.21).
If,
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