After these preliminaries, the bearing of intent upon the
crime is easily seen.
According to Mr. Bishop, larceny is "the taking and removing, by
trespass, of personal property which the trespasser knows to
belong either generally or specially to another, with the intent
to deprive such owner of his ownership therein; and perhaps it
should be added, for the sake of some advantage to the
trespasser, a proposition on which the decisions are not
harmonious." /1/
There must be an intent to deprive such owner of his [72]
ownership therein, it is said. But why? Is it because the law is
more anxious not to put a man in prison for stealing unless he is
actually wicked, than it is not to hang him for killing another?
That can hardly be. The true answer is, that the intent is an
index to the external event which probably would have happened,
and that, if the law is to punish at all, it must, in this case,
go on probabilities, not on accomplished facts. The analogy to
the manner of dealing with attempts is plain. Theft may be called
an attempt to permanently deprive a man of his property, which is
punished with the same severity whether successful or not. If
theft can rightly be considered in this way, intent must play the
same part as in other attempts.
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