The defendant is indicted for incest. This; offence was not indictable at common law, and as we have-no statute in this State declaring it to be a criminal offence, this indictment cannot be maintained. It is related that in the time of the Commonwealth in England, when the ruling-powers found it for their interest to put on the semblance of extraordinary strictness and purity of morals, incest and. wilful adultery were made capital crimes; but at the Restoration, when men from the abhorrence of the hypocrisy of the late times fell into a contrary extreme of licentiousness, it was not thought proper to renew the law of such tfn-fashionable rigor; and these offences have been ever since-left to the feeble coercion of the Spiritual Court according to the canon law. 4 Bl. 64; 2 Tomlin L. D. 160; Bish. Stat. Cr., §§ 725, 728; Bish. Mar. & Div. §§ 313, 315.

In most of the States of the Union incest is made an in *470 dictable offence by statute. Perhaps its rare occurrence in this State has caused the revolting crime to pass unnoticed by the Legislature.

No error.

Per CüRIAM. - Judgment affirmed.