it is done wilfully, with a knowledge that it is without right.  Short of that there is no offence within the statute.  This would be so upon well established principles, even if the word “knowingly” had been omitted, but that word was inserted to prevent the possibility of doubt on the subject, and to furnish security against the inability of stupid or prejudiced judges or jurors, to distinguish between wilful wrong and innocent mistake.  If the statute had been merely, that “if at any election for representative in Congress any person shall vote without having a lawful right to vote, such person shall be deemed guilty of a crime,” there could have been justly no conviction under it, without proof that the party voted knowing that he had not a right to vote.  If he voted innocently supposing he had the right to vote, but had not, it would not be an offence within the statute.  An innocent mistake is not a crime, and no amount of judicial decisions can make it such.

Mr. Bishop says, (1 Cr.  Law, Sec.205):  “There can be no crime unless a culpable intent accompanies the criminal act.”  The same author, (1 Cr.  Prac.  Sec.521), repeated in other words, the same idea:  “In order to render a party criminally responsible, a vicious will must concur with a wrongful act.”

I quote from a more distinguished author:  “Felony is always accompanied with an evil intention, and therefore shall not be imputed to a mere mistake, or misanimadversion, as where persons break open a door, in order to execute a warrant, which will not justify such proceeding:  Affectio enim tua nomen imponit operi tuo:  item crimen non contrahitur nisi nocendi, voluntas intercedat,” which, as I understand, may read:  “For your volition puts the name upon your act; and a crime is not committed unless the will of the offender takes part in it.”

          1 Hawk.  P.C., p. 99, Ch. 85, Sec.3.

This quotation by Hawkins is, I believe, from Bracton, which carries the principle back to a very early period in the existence of the common law.  It is a principle, however, which underlies all law, and must have been recognized at all times, wherever criminal law has been administered, with even the slightest reference to the principles of common morality and justice.

I quote again on this subject from Mr. Bishop:  “The doctrine of the intent as it prevails in the criminal law, is necessarily one of the foundation principles of public justice.  There is only one criterion by which the guilt of man is to be tested.  It is whether the mind is criminal.  Criminal law relates only to crime.  And neither in philosophical speculation, nor in religious or moral sentiment, would any people in any age allow that a man should be deemed guilty unless his mind was so.  It is, therefore, a principle of our legal system, as probably it is of every other, that the essence of an offence is the wrongful intent without which it cannot exist.” (1 Bishop’s Crim.  Law, Sec.287.)