in Europe under the title of The Consulate of the Sea, and which in the course of the 16th century was translated into the Castilian, the Italian, and the French languages. The Italian translation, printed at Venice in 1549 by Jean Baptista Pedrezano, was the version which obtained the largest circulation in the north of Europe, and led many jurists to suppose the work to have been of Italian origin. In the next following century the work was translated into Dutch by Westerven, and into German by Engelbrecht, and it is also said to have been translated into Latin. An excellent translation into French of " The Customs of the Sea," which are the most valuable portion of the Book of the Consulate, has been recently published by M. Pardessus in the second volume of his Collection des Lois Maritimes, under the title of "La compilation connue sous le nom de consulat de la mer," whilst an English translation of "The Customs of the Sea," under that title, with the Catalan text, has been published for the first time by Sir Travers Twiss, in the appendix to the Black Book of the Admiralty, vol, iii. London, 1874. The introduction to the latter work contains a full account of the two Catalan MSS. in the National Library in Paris, and of the various
editions of the Book of the Consulate.CONSUMPTION. See Phthisis.
CONTEMPT OF COURT is any insult offered to a court of justice, or any defiance or resistance to its authority. " If the contempt be committed in the face of the court, the offender may be instantly apprehended and imprisoned at the discretion of the judges, without any further proof or examination." In other cases if the judges have reason to believe, from an affidavit, that a contempt has been committed, they make a rule calling on tho suspected person to show cause why an attachment should not issue against him, or in flagrant cases the attachment issues in the first instance. (See Attachment.) The process of attachment merely brings the accused into court ; he is then required to answer on oath interroga tories administered to him, so that the court may be better informed of the circumstances of the contempt. If he can clear himself on oath he is discharged ; if he confesses the court will punish him by fine or imprisonment, or both, at its discretion. Both in courts of common law and courts of equity many acts are punished as contempts which are properly civil injuries, and the process of contempt enforced against them is, as Blackstone points out, to be looked upon rather as a civil execution for the benefit of the injured party than as a criminal process for a contempt of the authority of the court. Among the offences enumerated in the text books as the most usual instances of contempt are the following:—(1) Disobedience of inferior judges and magistrates ; (2) Wrongdoing by sheriffs, bailiffs, jailers, and other officers in executing the process of the law ; (3) Malpractice of attorneys and solicitors ; (4) .Misbehaviour of jurymen in collateral matters relating to the discharge of their duties; (5) Misbehaviour of witnesses; (6) Disobedience of parties in a cause to an order of the court, non-payment of costs, non-observance of awards ; (7) Those committed by other persons. Among those general contempts some, says Blackstone, " may arise in the face of the court, as by rude and contumelious behaviour, by obstinacy, perverseness, or prevarication, by breach of the peace, or any wilful disturbance whatever ; and others in the absence of the party, as by disobeying or treating with disrespect the king s writ or the rules and process of the court, by perverting such writ or process to the purposes of private malice, &c., by speaking or writing contemptu ously of the court or judges acting in their judicial capacity, by printing false accounts (or even true ones without proper permission) of causes depending in judgment," &c.
The practice of the courts in puni&hing the last class of contempts is of great importance in these days, inasmuch as it involves the question of the liberty of the press. It will be seen from the following statement that the judges have assumed very extensive and arbitrary powers of interfering with the free discussion by the public of the proceedings in courts of justice.
case of an application for an attachment against J. Almon in 1 765, for publishing a pamphlet libelling the Queen s Bench, is, although it never was delivered in court, constantly referred to as authoritative by later judges and writers. The chief-justice said that the offence of libelling judges in their judicial capacity is the most proper case for an attachment, for the " arraignment of the justice of the judges is arraigning the king s justice ; it is an impeach ment of his wisdom and goodness in the choice of his judges ; and excites in the minds of the people a general dissatisfaction with all judicial determinations, and indisposes their minds to obey them. To be impartial, and to be universally thought so, are both absolutely necessary for the giving justice that free, open, and uninterrupted current which it has for many ages found all over this kingdom, and which so eminently distinguishes and exalts it above all nations upon the earth." Again " the consti tution has provided very apt and proper remedies for cor recting and rectifying the involuntary mistakes of judges, and for punishing and removing them for any perversion of justice. But if their authority is to be trampled on by pamphleteers and news-writers, and the people are to be told that the power given to the judges for their protection is prostituted to their destruction, the court may retain its power some little time, but I am sure it will eventually lose all its authority." In several cases the judges have declared that while their administration of justice may be discussed fairly and bonafi.de, it is not open to a journalist to impute corruption. A recent writer (Shortt, Law relating to Works of Literature} states the law to be that the temperate and respectful discussion of judicial determina tion is not prohibited, but mere invective and abuse, and still more the imputation of false, corrupt, and dishonest motives is punishable. In an information granted in 1788 against the corporation of Yarmouth for having entered upon their books an order " stating that the assembly were sensible that Mr W, (against whom an action had been brought for malicious prosecution, and a verdict for X3000 returned, which the court refused to disturb) was actuated by motives of public justice, of preserving the rights of the corporation to their admiralty jurisdiction, and of support ing the honour and credit of the chief magistrate," Mr Justice Buller said, The judge and jury who tried the case, confirmed by the Court of Common Pleas, have said that instead of his having been actuated by motives of public justice, or by any motives which should influence the actions of an honest man, he had been actuated by malice. These opinions are not reconcilable ; if the one be right the other must be wrong. It is therefore a direct insinuation that the court had judged wrong in all they have done in this case, and is therefore clearly a libel on the administra tion of justice," Many of the doctrines expressed in the above extracts go beyond the practice, if not the strict law of later times. The tendency has been to restrict the process of contempt to cases in which judges are insulted or defied in the discharge of their duties, or in which matters relating to a pending cause are publicly discussed. Bribes or menaces offered to the judges have been punished as contempts. In a recent case a judge of assize having ordered the court to be cleared on account of some disturb ance, the high sheriff issued a placard protesting against " this unlawful proceeding," " and prohibiting his officers from aiding and abetting any attempt to bar out the public
