Assassination, murdering a person by lying in wait. In modern times the term is frequently applied to the open murder of great personages from political motives, as of the King of Italy by Brescia in 1900, and of the President of the United States of America by Czolgosz in 1901. The Offences against the (English) Person Act, 1861, s. 4, makes it a misdemeanour punishable by penal servitude for not more than ten years to solicit any person to murder any other person, whether a subject of the king or not, and whether within the king's dominions or not: and in Reg. v. Most, (1881) 7 QBD 244, this enactment was held by the Court for Crown Cases Reserved, constituted under the Crown Cases Act, 1948, to apply to the publication of a newspaper containing an article exulting over the assassination of the Emperor of Russia in 1881, and hoping that it was not the last.
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