There is no moral justice in, nor any political necessity for, punishing a man for any act whatever that he may have committed, if he have done it without any criminal intent. There can be no _moral justice_ in punishing for such an act, because, there having been no _criminal motive_, there can have been no other motive which justice can take cognizance of, as demanding or justifying punishment. There can be no _political necessity_ for punishing, to warn against similar acts in future, because, if one man have injured another, however unintentionally, he is liable, and justly liable, to a _civil_ suit for damages; and in this suit he will be compelled to make compensation for the injury, notwithstanding his innocence of any intention to injure. He must bear the consequences of his own act, instead of throwing them upon another, however innocent he may have been of any intention to do wrong. And the damages he will have to pay will be a sufficient warning to him not to do the like act again. If it be alleged that there are crimes against the public, (as treason, for example, or any other resistance to government,) for which private persons can recover no damages, and that there is a political necessity for punishing for such offences, even though the party acted conscientiously, the answer is,--the government must bear with all resistance that is not so clearly wrong as to give evidence of criminal intent. In other words, the government, in all its acts, must keep itself so _clearly_ within the limits of justice, as that twelve men, taken at random, will all agree that it is in the right, or it must incur the risk of resistance, without any power to punish it. This is the mode in which the trial by jury operates to prevent the government from falling into the hands of a party, or a faction, and to keep it within such limits as _all_, or substantially _all_, the people are agreed that it may occupy. This necessity for a criminal intent, to justify conviction, is proved by the issue which the jury are to try, and the verdict they are to pronounce. The "issue" they are to try is, "_guilty_" or "_not guilty_." And those are the terms they are required to use in rendering their verdicts. But it is a plain falsehood to say that a man is "_guilty_," unless he have done an act which he knew to be criminal. This necessity for a criminal intent--in other words, for _guilt_--as a preliminary to conviction, makes it impossible that a man can be rightfully convicted for an act that is intrinsically innocent, though forbidden by the government; because guilt is an intrinsic quality of actions and motives, and not one that can be imparted to them by arbitrary legislation. All the efforts of the government, therefore, to "_make offences by statute_," out of acts that are not criminal by nature, must necessarily be ineffectual, unless a jury will declare a man "_guilty_" for an act that is really innocent.