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from mere wantonness or mischief, upon conviction, is to be adjudged guilty of a misdemeanor and punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment. And every person who shall receive the dead body or remains of any human being, knowing the same to have been disinterred contrary to these provisions, on conviction, is also to be adjudged guilty of misdemeanor and punished as aforesaid. (Revised Statutes, 1845, Ch. 47, Secs. 11 and 12.)

§ 1153. It is also declared that every person who shall open the grave or other place of interment or sepulture, with intent to remove the dead body or human remains, for any of the purposes specified in the last preceding section, or to steal the coffin or any vestment or other article, or any part thereof interred with such body, on conviction, is to be adjudged guilty of a misdemeanor, and punished as in the last section specified. None of these provisions, however, are made to extend to any person who shall commit such acts with regard to the body of any deceased person, for the purpose of dissection, or some surgical or anatomical experiment, examination or preparation, with the knowledge and consent of the near relatives of such deceased person, nor to the disinterment or removal, for such purpose, of the body of any criminal executed for crime. (Ib., Secs. 13 and 14.)

§ 1154. In the State of Louisiana it is declared by statute that all public cemeteries for the purpose of interment, with the monuments erected thereon, whether owned by religious or charitable corporations or associations, by municipal corporations or by individuals, shall be forever exempt from taxation and from seizure and sale for debt, and shall never be susceptible of mortgage, whether legal or conventional. (Revised Statutes 1856, Tit. "Cemetery," Sec. 1.)

§ 1155. It is also provided that all religious denominations and congregations which may own any portion of land destined as a place for the interment of the dead, shall have the right to sell, convey and transfer such parts, fractions or lots of the same as may be necessary and proper for interments; and the acts of sale, conveyance and transfer will be passed under such forms as may be prescribed by the by-laws or special resolutions of the religious denominations and congregations or other associations; and acts of sale so made are declared to be equally authentic and impart full proof as if they had been passed before a notary public and two witnesses. It is not made necessary to record the deeds of conveyance in any public office, and it is unlawful for the recorder of mortgages of any city or parish of the State, to record or certify the existence of any privilege or mortgage bearing on said lots. The lots are declared to be forever free from taxation and from seizure, attachment or sequestration for debts of any owner, whether belonging to the successions of deceased persons or to surviving friends. (Ib., Sec. 2.)

§ 1156. In the State of Arkansas, lands may be conveyed to and be held by trustees for a burying-ground the same as for purposes of religious worship. (Ante, Sec. 800.) Besides it is made a misdemeanor for any person to remove the dead body of any human being from the grave or place of interment, for the purpose of stealing the same, or for the purpose of dissection, or for mere wantonness, or to purchase such dead body knowing the same to have been disinterred contrary to law, or to open a grave or other place of interment, with intent to remove such dead body for the purpose of selling the same, or stealing the coffin or any articles interred with such dead body; and, upon conviction, the offender may be fined in any sum not less than one hundred dollars, and be imprisoned not less than six months. But

these penal provisions do not extend to bodies of persons executed under the criminal laws of the State. (Digest of Statutes, 1858, Ch. 51, Art. VII, Secs. 1-5.)

§ 1157. By the laws of Texas, if any person wrongfully destroy, mutilate, deface, injure or remove any tomb, monument, grave-stone or other structure in any place used or intended for the burial of the dead, or any fence, railing or curb, for the protection of such structure, or any enclosure for any such place of burial, or injure, cut, remove or destroy any tree or shrub growing within any such inclosure, he must be punished by imprisonment in jail, not exceeding six months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars; and, if any person not authorized by law, or by a relative or friend, for the purpose of re-interment, shall disinter, remove or carry away any human body, or the remains thereof, or shall conceal the same, knowing it to be so illegally disinterred, he must be punished by fine not exceeding two hundred dollars. (Digest of Laws, 1859; Penal Code, Tit. 12, Ch. 5, Art. 399, a and b.)

CHAPTER LXXXIV.

BURIAL-GROUNDS IN DELAWARE, WEST VIRGINIA, SOUTH CAROLINA AND FLORIDA-THE COMMON LAW UPON THE SUBJECT IN FORCE IN THESE STATES-CONCLUSION.

1158. In the State of Delaware they have no statutes. regulating burial-grounds, or providing for their protection and preservation, except that power is given to religious societies to hold and improve lands for the purposes of the interment and sepulture of the dead. (Ante, Sec. 704.) In

the States of West Virginia, South Carolina and Florida, no general statutes are found relating to cemeteries or burialplaces in any particular. There seems to have been a few instances of local legislation upon the subject, but nothing of a general nature is found.

§ 1159. In these States, therefore, the subject rests principally upon the ample provisions of the common law, which affords very tolerable facilities for establishing, preserving and protecting burial-grounds, and for punishing offenders who may be guilty of desecrating these sacred places. And here it is interesting to reflect how very extensively the common law, in a general point of view, regulates our conduct and determines our rights. Our civil duties and liabilities depend much more upon this code than upon positive enactment. That lex non scripta, which rests in the decisions of the courts and general customs of the people, is the code which must fill up every wide space which the statute law cannot occupy. It is the application of the dictates of natural justice and of cultivated reason to particular cases. In fact, we live in the midst of the common law; we inhale it at every breath, imbibe it at every pore; we meet it when we wake and when we lie down to sleep; when we travel and when we stay at home; it is interwoven with the very idiom that we speak; and we cannot learn another system of laws without learning, at the same time, another language." In the words of the eminent STORY, "its highest praise is, that its principles receive an almost universal homage, not as the positive dictates of authority, but as the persuasive and irresistible influence of reason. Valent pro ratione, non pro introducto jure." With this admirable code in full force in these States, it is quite obvious that, in the absence of positive statutes, they are not destitute of legal provisions for christian sepulture.

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§ 1160. We have heretofore seen that the general law of pious and charitable uses is in force in the United States to the extent that gifts and devises for the benefit of unincorporated religious societies are sustained in all cases, when the same are made to trustees capable of taking the legal estate, and the objects of the trust are definite and reasonably certain. (Ante, Secs. 818, 819 and 823.) Upon the same principle gifts, donations and bequests for the support of burial-grounds will be upheld and sustained. (Doe v. Pitcher, 6 Taunt. R. 363.) Land dedicated as a place of burial is regarded as a dedication to public and pious uses, and the dedication may be established by the same evidence as in other cases of the kind. (Beatty v. Kurtz, 2 Peters R. 566.) The doctrine which is applicable to trusts for the support of religious worship and the Christian ministry, applies with equal force to trusts for the support of a depository of the dead. (Beatty v. Kurtz, supra.)

§ 1161. We have also seen that desecrating the grave, digging up dead bodies or selling them, is a misdemeanor at common law, and indictable and punishable as such. (Sec. 1027, note.) So it has been held that stealing dead bodies, though for the improvement of the science of anatomy, is an indictable offense at common law, it being considered a practice contrary to common decency, and shocking to the general sentiments and feelings of mankind. (The King v. Lynn, 2 Term. R. 733; Ib. 1 Leach's Crown Cases, 497.) So, also, it is an offense at common law to disinter dead bodies, even for the purpose of dissection. (Commonwealth v. Cooley, 10 Pick. R. 37.) These well established provisions of the common law will enable every civilized community to provide and maintain suitable depositories for the dead, independent of any statutory enactment.

§ 1162. But however much the common law may afford

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