TITLE XXI.

OF OFFENCES AGAINST CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CONDITIONS.

CHAPTER I.

Of the substitution, exposure of infants, and of falsifying registers.

Art. 570. If any person to whom an infant, under the age of six years, shall be confided for nursing, education, or other purpose, shall, with intent to deceive the parents, tutors, or curators of such infant, substitute, or attempt to substitute another child in the place of the one so confided, he shall be imprisoned at hard labour not less than three nor more than seven years.

Art. 571. The word substitute in this chapter means, to deliver to the person confiding the child, another instead of the one so confided, under the pretence that it is the same.

Art. 572. If any one, to whom such a child shall be so confided, or its father or mother, shall expose or desert such child, with intent wholly to abandon it, in a place where its life will be endangered, the punishment shall be imprisonment at hard labour not less than five nor more than ten years.

Art. 573. But if such abandonment be made without the knowledge of the father, mother, tutor or curator of the child, by the person to whom it shall have been confided, by fraudulently depositing it in an inhabited house, one half of the punishment, mentioned in the last article, shall be inflicted.

Art. 574. If such child shall die in consequence of such exposure, it is infanticide, murder, or murder under trust, depending on the person who commits the crime. If it receive any other bodily injury, the offence shall be punished in the same manner as the same injury would be, had it been done with intent to kill.

Art. 575. If any one shall, for the purpose of intercepting an inheritance in the whole or in part, fraudulently produce an infant, falsely pretending it to be born of parents, whose child would stand in the order of successsion to such inheritance before or equally with another person, whose condition and civil rights it was intended to intercept, the persons so offending, and those who shall aid and assist in the deception, shall be imprisoned in close custody not less than six nor more than twelve months, and shall be suspended from the exercise of their civil rights of the first and third class for five years.

If any one shall, for the purpose of injuring another in his civil or political rights, or in his right to property, destroy, or alter any certificate of birth, or marriage, or burial, he shall be imprisoned not less than seven nor more than fifteen years at hard labour, and shall forfeit his political rights.

If any person, whose duty it is, by law, to make a record of births, marriages, or deaths; or any curate, priest, minister, or parson, who in any church or religious congregation, is charged with keeping a register of births, marriages, or funerals, celebrated for the members of such church or religious congregation, shall fraudulently make a false entry in such record or register of any such birth, marriage, death, or funeral, with intent to injure any one in his condition, civil or political rights, or his right to property, he shall be imprisoned at hard labour not less than seven nor more than fifteen years.

Art. 576. Other offences affecting political rights will be found in the title of offences against the right of suffrage.

CHAPTER II.

Of bigamy.

Art. 577. A person having a wife or husband living, who shall, without having a reasonable cause to believe such wife or husband to be dead, contract a second marriage, is guilty of bigamy, and shall be imprisoned at hard labour not less than one, nor more than five years.

Art. 578. If the first wife or husband had, at the time of the subsequent marriage, been absent for five years, and during that time the accused had not received any intelligence of his or her being alive, this shall, for the purposes of this chapter, be considered such a reasonable belief of death, as to take away all criminality from the act.

Art. 579. What other cause to believe the death of the former husband or wife shall be deemed a reasonable cause, is matter of fact, to be decided according to the circumstances of the case.

Art. 580. It is not necessary, to constitute this offence, that the first marriage should have been contracted within this state; but it must, wherever celebrated, have been a valid marriage, according to the laws of the country in which it was contracted.

Art. 581. The subsequent marriage must also be made according to the forms prescribed by law to give validity to marriages in this state. Art. 582. If a citizen of this state, residing therein, having a husband or wife living, either here or elsewhere, shall go out of this state, and contract a second marriage, with the intent of returning to reside within this state, and shall so return he or she shall be deemed guilty of the crime of bigamy.

Art. 583. If the first marriage be not null in itself, but only voidable, a second marriage, during the lives of the parties to the first, is bigamy; unless such first marriage had been declared void by a competent authority, or had become so by the operation of law or the act of the party, before the time of contracting the second marriage.

Art. 584. No other divorce but one, from the bonds of matrimony, is such a dissolution of the first marriage as will exempt the party from the guilt of bigamy or a second marriage, while both parties to the first are living.

Art. 585. A third marriage, during the lifetime of the parties to the second, is bigamy, although the second marriage was contracted during

the lifetime of the parties to the first, and in a manner to make it bigamy; and in case of three or more successive marriages, any of the persons, with whom the party accused, contracted either of the former marriages, being alive, at the time of celebrating a subsequent one, he or she may be convicted of bigamy.

TITLE XXII.

OF OFFENCES AFFECTING PERSONS IN THEIR PROFESSION OR TRADE.

THE offences coming under the purview of this title, will be found in the titles, "Of offences affecting commerce and manufactures," and in the chapter of "Conspiracies."

TITLE XXIII.

OF OFFENCES AFFECTING PRIVATE PROPERTY.

CHAPTER I.

Of burning and other malicious injury to property.

Art. 586. If any one shall MALICIOUSLY SET FIRE to any DWELLING HOUSE, with intent to destroy the same; or shall destroy such house by an explosion of gunpowder or any other explosive matter, he shall be imprisoned, at hard labour, during life. If the house be not a dwelling house, but contain personal property of the value of one hundred dollars, he shall be imprisoned, in like manner, not less than seven nor more than fourteen years and if it be empty, or contain personal property of less value than one hundred dollars, the punishment shall be a like imprisonment, not less than five nor more than ten years.

Art. 587. A house, within the meaning of this chapter, is any edifice so built as to come within the denomination of real estate, according to the definition of that term in this code, being closed in on all sides, and having the area, which is enclosed by its sides, covered with a roof. This definition excludes a tent, a booth or an open shed.

Art. 588. A dwelling-house is one in which some person habitually sleeps or eats his meals, or one that is built and intended for that purpose, although not actually inhabited.

Art. 589. This offence of setting fire to a dwelling-house, is also committed by setting fire to any building that communicates, by any combustible matter with the inhabited building, or that is so near to it as, if the one burns, to cause the other to take fire.

Art. 590. If any one shall, in like manner and with like intent as is above expressed, set fire to any building, not coming within the description of a house, or to any stack of grain or hay, any heap of firewood, or timber, or other collection of combustible produce of the earth, standing or being on the land of another, and of the value of ten dollars or upwards he shall be imprisoned not less than six nor more than twelve months, or fined not more than five hundred dollars, or both, at the discretion of the court.

Art. 591. The intent must be malicious; therefore, if the house be the property of the person who does the act, and no other person has any interest therein, he is guilty of no offence. But if there be any other person interested as joint owner, usufructuary, lessee, or in any other manner whatever; or if another have an incumbrance on the house, or have made insurance thereon-the offence is incurred, although the person committing the act may have some estate in the house. This article applies to all the offences described in this chapter. Art. 592. If one set fire to his own house, with the intent that the fire shall communicate to that of another, and it does so communicate-he is guilty of this offence.

Art. 593. The offence is not complete merely by the burning of the combustible matter placed for communicating the fire. It must actually have communicated to the house; but it is not necessary for this purpose, that it should be completely destroyed.

Art. 594. If any building destroyed by fire, contrary to the provisions of this section, contain any DOMESTIC ANIMALS, which are destroyed with the building-the punishment shall be increased onehalf.

Art. 595. If any one shall, designedly, and with intent to injure, illegally set fire to, or destroy or injure by explosion, any ship or other vessel, boat, flat-boat or raft, which with the cargo, if any there be, is of the value of one hundred dollars or upwards-he shall be imprisoned, at hard labour, not less than three nor more than seven years.

Art. 596. The "intent to injure," mentioned in the articles of this section, means an intent to cause a PECUNIARY loss to some person (other than the offender) having an interest in or upon the property when the act is designedly done. The circumstance that another has an interest in or upon it, is conclusive proof of the intent to injure.

Art. 597. Where death is occasioned by any of the offences described in this section, the offender is guilty of murder; and of assassination, if he intended the death of the party.

Art. 598. If any bodily injury, less than death, is suffered by the fire or explosion, in the execution of the offence-the punishment shall be doubled in all cases where the punishment is less than imprisonment for life.

Art. 599. If any of the offences described in this section be committed during the NIGHT, the punishment shall be increased one-half. Art. 600. Whoever shall MALICIOUSLY destroy any personal property exclusively belonging to, and in the possession of another, if of any of the kinds herein before described, by any other means than by fire, or if of any other kind, by any means whatever, being of the value of ten dollars or more; or in like manner injure it to that amount, he shall be imprisoned not less than one month, nor more than one year, or shall be fined not exceeding five hundred dollars, or both, and the im

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prisonment or part of it may be in close custody. If the offence described in this article be committed by poisoning, killing or disabling any animal of any kind usually employed in husbandry, or raised for sale, the punishment shall be doubled, but shall not be less than imprisonment for thirty days in close custody, or a fine of two hundred and fifty dollars.

Árt. 601. If any one shall MALICIOUSLY destroy the fences or enclosures of any real property belonging exclusively to another, and in his separate possession, or shall destroy any trees, shrubs or any CROP of any kind growing thereon, if the fences or other things so destroyed are of the value of ten dollars or upwards, he shall be imprisoned not more than one year, or fined not exceeding five hundred dollars, or both; and the imprisonment, or any part thereof, may be in close custody.

Art. 602. If any one shall MALICIOUSLY destroy any original written obligations or original acts, giving an interest in, or a right to any or personal property, of the value of one hundred dollars, belonging to another, or shall in like manner destroy the copy of any such obligation or act, when by reason of the destruction of the original or other legal cause, such copy is the only proof of the obligation or act, he shall be imprisoned not less than one month, nor more than one year, or be fined not less than fifty, nor more than one thousand dollars, or both, and the imprisonment or any part of it may be in close custody.

Art. 603. If any one shall maliciously or fraudulently remove or destroy any post, stone, tree, or other thing serving as a land-mark to designate a boundary between two different tracts of land, he shall be imprisoned at hard labour not less than one nor more than three years, and shall forfeit his political rights.

Art. 604. Injuries to property by negligence are not the object of penal law.

CHAPTER II.

Of house-breaking.

Art. 605. Whoever enters a HOUSE secretly, or by force, or threats, or fraud, during the NIGHT, or in like manner enters a HOUSE by day, and conceals himself therein until the NIGHT, with the INTENT in either case of committing a crime, is guilty of the crime of house-breaking, and shall be imprisoned at hard labour not less than ten nor more than fifteen years.

Art. 606. The qualifications of secrecy, force, or fraud, as applied to the entry, in the description of this offence, are intended to exclude every kind of entry but one made by the free consent of the occupant, or of one authorized to give such consent for him, fairly obtained and expressly or impliedly given.

Art. 607. Although a consent be given to an entrance into one part of a house, yet an entrance into any other part, by any of the means and with the intent described in the first article of this section, constitutes the crime of house-breaking.