son; to complete and assure the great contribution, he contributes a sum of money also. If all this accumulated disloyalty, beginning in a total renunciation of every patriotic duty, and finally consummated by an act of flagrant, unblushing enormity, is not “aid and comfort” or “countenance” or “encouragement” to the Rebellion, it is difficult to say what can be. There must be new dictionaries for these familiar words, and they must receive a definition down to this day unknown. They must be treated as thread or gossamer, when they should be links of iron. On an occasion like the present, where the moral guilt is so patent, I hesitate to employ technical language. The simplest phrase is the best. But the law supplies language of its own. Regarding the act of Mr. Thomas in the mildest light, it was “misprision of treason,” according to every definition of that crime which can be found in the books. Lord Hale, whose authority, in stating the rules of Criminal Law, is of the highest character, says, under this head: “Every man is bound to use all possible lawful means to prevent a felony, as well as to take the felon; and if he doth not, he is liable to a fine and imprisonment.”[83] Lord Coke, another eminent authority, says: “If any be present when a man is slain, and omit to apprehend the slayer, it is a misprision.”[84] The same rule is, of course, applicable to treason. Mr. Bishop, who in his remarkable work on the Criminal Law has compressed the result of all the authorities, says: “Misprision of felony is a criminal neglect, either to prevent a felony from being committed by another, or to bring to justice a person known to be guilty of felony. Misprision of treason is the same of treason.”[85] Then again he says, citing Hawkins, Blackstone, East, and Russell, all familiar names in our courts, each an oracle:-- “The doctrine of misprision, as now understood, may be stated as follows: To make a man liable for a crime committed through the physical volition of another, his own will must in some degree concur in or contribute to the crime. _But when it is treason or felony, and he stands by while it is done, without using the means in his power to prevent it, though his will concurs not in it,--or when he knows of its having been in his absence committed, but neither makes disclosure of it to the authorities nor does anything to bring the offender to punishment_,--the law holds him guilty of a breach of the duty due from every man to the community wherein he dwells and the government which protects him.”[86] I adduce these authorities in order to show, that, by the Common Law, as illustrated by some of its best names, Mr. Thomas is beyond all question an offender. Clearly he did not use “the means in his power” to prevent the treason of his son, nor did he “make disclosure of it to the authorities,” according to the received rule of law.