Sec.3.  The common law is not a code of written laws enacted by a legislature, but consists of rules of action which have become binding from long usage and established custom.  It is said to be founded in reason and the principles of justice.  The common law of England was brought over by our ancestors, and established here before the revolution.  Some of the states, in their constitutions, adopted after the revolution, declared it to be the law of their respective states; and it has continued to be law in all the states, and is still so considered, except such parts as have been altered or repealed by constitutional or legislative enactments, or by usage.

Sec.4.  The most valuable rights protected by law are the rights of personal security and personal liberty.  The right of personal security is the right to be secure from injury to our persons or good names.  By personal liberty is meant the freedom of our bodies or persons from restraint or confinement.  Provisions guarantying these rights have been incorporated into our national constitution, and the constitutions of the several states.

Sec.5.  The right of personal security is also protected by the law, by which a man, on showing reasonable cause of danger of personal injury, may require his adversary to be bound with sureties to keep the peace.  And for violence committed, the offender may be prosecuted in behalf of the state and punished, and is liable also to the party aggrieved in a civil suit for damages.

Sec.6.  This right is further protected by the law which permits a man to exercise the natural right of self-defense.  In defending his person in case of a felonious assault, he may lawfully take the life of his assailant.  This is by law pronounced justifiable homicide, and is allowed also in defense of one’s property against felonious and violent injury.  But homicide (man-killing) is not justifiable in case of a private injury, nor upon the pretense of necessity when the party is not free from fault in bringing that necessity upon himself.

Sec.7.  The right to be secure in our good names, which is included in the right of personal security, is protected by the law against slander and libel.  A slander is a false and malicious report or statement tending to injure another in his reputation or business, and which, if true, would render him unworthy of confidence or employment; or it is the maliciously charging of another with anything by which he sustains special injury.  The slander of a person by words spoken, is a civil injury, that is, an injury for which redress is to be obtained in a civil suit for damages.

Sec.8.  A slander written or printed, is called libel.  A libel is a malicious publication in print or writing, signs or pictures, tending to expose a person to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule.  And it is considered in law a publication of such defamatory writing, though communicated to a single person.  A slander written or printed is likely to have a wider circulation, to make a deeper impression, and to become more injurious.  A person may therefore be liable in damages for words in print or writing, for which he would not be liable if merely spoken.  In case of libel, a person is not only liable to a private suit for damages, but may be indicted and tried as for other public offenses.