There remain to be considered certain substantive crimes, which differ in very important ways from murder and the like, and for the explanation of which the foregoing analysis of intent in criminal attempts and analogous misdemeanors will be found of service.

The type of these is larceny.  Under this name acts are punished which of themselves would not be sufficient to accomplish the evil which the law seeks to prevent, and which are treated as equally criminal, whether the evil has been accomplished or not.  Murder, manslaughter, and arson, on the other hand, are not committed unless the evil is accomplished, and they all consist of acts the tendency of which under the surrounding circumstances is to hurt or destroy person or property by the mere working of natural laws.

In larceny the consequences immediately flowing from the act are generally exhausted with little or no harm to the owner.  Goods are removed from his possession by [71] trespass, and that is all, when the crime is complete.  But they must be permanently kept from him before the harm is done which the law seeks to prevent.  A momentary loss of possession is not what has been guarded against with such severe penalties.  What the law means to prevent is the loss of it wholly and forever, as is shown by the fact that it is not larceny to take for a temporary use without intending to deprive the owner of his property.  If then the law punishes the mere act of taking, it punishes an act which will not of itself produce the evil effect sought to be prevented, and punishes it before that effect has in any way come to pass.

The reason is plain enough.  The law cannot wait until the property has been used up or destroyed in other hands than the owner’s, or until the owner has died, in order to make sure that the harm which it seeks to prevent has been done.  And for the same reason it cannot confine itself to acts likely to do that harm.  For the harm of permanent loss of property will not follow from the act of taking, but only from the series of acts which constitute removing and keeping the property after it has been taken.  After these preliminaries, the bearing of intent upon the crime is easily seen.

According to Mr. Bishop, larceny is “the taking and removing, by trespass, of personal property which the trespasser knows to belong either generally or specially to another, with the intent to deprive such owner of his ownership therein; and perhaps it should be added, for the sake of some advantage to the trespasser, a proposition on which the decisions are not harmonious.” 1