Note 2 — Chapter XII · FORBEARANCES AND CARELESSNESS—CHARACTER

Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 322 sq. To a certain extent, however, this has been admitted by legislators even in the Middle Ages. Frederick II.’s Sicilian Code imposed a penalty on persons who witnessed conflagrations or shipwrecks without helping the victims, and a fine of four augustales on anyone who, hearing the shrieks of an assaulted woman, did not hurry to her rescue (Constitutiones Napolitana sive Siculæ, i. 28, 22 [Lindenbrog, Codex legum antiquarum, pp. 715, 712]). Bracton says (De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, fol. 121, vol. ii. 280 sq.) that he who could rescue a man from death and did not do it, ought not to be exempt from punishment. It was a principle of the Canon law that he who does not prevent the infliction of an injury upon his neighbour when it lies in his power to do so, is to be regarded as an accomplice in the offence (Geyer, Lehre von der Nothwehr, p. 74. Gregory IX. Decretales, v. 12, 6. 2: “Qui potuit hominem liberare a morte, et non liberavit, eum occidit”).