get off of any criminal accusation, at first even murder, by simply pleading his clergy; in which case the worst that could happen to him was that he was branded in the right hand. But the Constitutions of Clarendon were a great step toward civil liberty. Taken by us in 1164, it was followed in so neighboring a country as France only so late as a few years ago. The priests, however, still managed to retain their jurisdiction over offences among themselves, as well as over marriage, the relation between the sexes, slander, usury, and wills--of matters relating to the sacraments, and of sins. [Footnote 1: Stubbs, p. 136.] [Footnote 2: Yet "Peter's Pence" were initiated by Ini, King of the West Saxons, about 690!] Now this is a very interesting matter, and were it borne in mind by our modern legislators they would escape a good deal of unintelligent legislation; that is, the distinction between a sin and a crime. A sin is against the church, or against one's conscience; matter, therefore, for the priest, or one's spiritual adviser. A crime is an offence against other men; that is, against the state, in which all are concerned. Under the intelligent legislation of the twelfth century all matters which were _sins_, which concerned the conscience, were left to the church to prevent or punish. For the same reason usury was matter for the priest--because it was regarded under the doctrines of the Bible as a sin. This notion prevailed down to the early legislation of the colony of Massachusetts, though doubtless many things which were then considered sins would now be regarded as crimes, such as bigamy, for instance. The distinction is, nevertheless, a valid one, and we shall have occasion frequently to refer to it. We shall find that the defect of much of our modern legislation--prohibition laws, for instance--is that they attempt to treat as crimes, as offences against the state, matters which are merely sins, offences against the conscience or the individual who commits them.