A tort is not a crime but merely a wrong affecting the civil rights of an individual, while a crime is a wrong affecting the public rights and is an injury to the whole community.11

Blackstone's distinction: The distinction of public wrongs from private, of crimes and misdemeanors from civil injuries, seems principally to consist in this: that private wrongs or civil injuries are an infringement or privation of the civil rights which belong to individuals, considered merely as individuals; public wrongs, or crimes and misdemeanors, are a breach and violation of the public rights and duties due to the whole community, considered as a community, in its social aggregate capacity. As if a man detain a field from another man, to which the law has given him a right, this is a civil injury, and not a crime; for here only the right of an individual isconcerned, and it is immaterial to the public which of us is in possession of the land; but treason, murder and robbery are properly ranked among crimes, since, besides the injury done to individuals, they strike at the very being of society, which cannot possibly subsist where actions of this sort are suffered to escape with impunity.12

1 Van Merter vs. People, 60 111., 168. 8 People vs. Bradley, 60 111., 390- 402; State vs. West, 42 Minn., 147; People vs. Harty, 49

Mich., 490. • Wiggins vs. City of Chicago, 68111., 372; 8 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, 252.

10 Wiggins vs. City of Chicago, 68

111., 372. 11 Stetson vs. Faxon, 19 Pick.

(Mass.), 147; Sohn vs. Cambern, 106 Ind., 302; Tolo vs.

Sacramento, 36 Cal., 193; Low vs. Knowlton, 26 Me., 128;

Frink vs. Lawrence, 20 Conn., 117.