Treason, 1 Sto

614, The words “treason, felony and breach of the peace” in section 6, art. 1, of the United States constitution should be construed in the same sense as they were commonly used and understood in England as applied to the parliamentary privilege, and as excluding from the privilege all arrests and prosecutions for criminal offences, and confining the privilege alone to arrests in civil cases; Williamson v. U. S., 207 U. S. 425, 28 Sup. Ct. 163, 52 U. Ed. 278. Treason felony in England is a statutory offense punishable with penal servitude for life under an act of 1848, and relates to the offense of deposing the king from the style, honor or royal name of the imperial crown, or declaring war against him to compel him to change his measures or councils, or to put any force upon parliament, etc. By the Act of 1814, treason was punished by mutilation after death; by the act of 1870, by hanging, unless the king substitutes decapitation. 4 Steph. Com. 144. Treason, or its French equivalent, “Traliison'* (German, Kricgsverrath ), as employed to indicate any acts on the part of the inhabitants of an invaded territory which are calculated to deceive the invader or to inform their own side of his forces or movements. Holland, War on Land 49. See Sedition.

Defined under Treason in Bouvier's Law Dictionary and Concise Encyclopedia.