ary opening as a chimney. If an entry
is obtained through an open window, it will not be burglary, but if an
inner door is afterwards opened, it immediately becomes so. Entry includes
the insertion through an open door or window, or any aperture, of any part
of the body or of any instrument in the hand to draw out goods. The entry
may be before the breaking, for the Larceny Act 1861 has extended the
definition of burglary to cases in which a person enters another's dwelling
with intent to commit felony, or being in such house commits felony
therein, and in either case _breaks out_ of such dwelling-house by night.

Breaking and entry must be with the _intent_ to commit a felony, otherwise
it is only trespass. The felony need not be a larceny, it may be either
murder or rape. The punishment is penal servitude for life, or any term not
less than three years, or imprisonment not exceeding two years, with or
without hard labour.

_Housebreaking_ in English law is to be distinguished from burglary, in
that it is not essential that it should be committed at night, nor in a
dwelling-house. It may, according to the Larceny Act 1861, be committed in
a school-house, shop, warehouse or counting-house. Every burglary involves
housebreaking, but every housebreaking does not amount to burglary. The
punishment for housebreaking is penal servitude for any term not exceeding
fourteen years and not less than three years, or imprisonment for any term
not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.

In the United States the common-law definition of burglary has been
modified by statute in many states, so as to cover what is defined in
England as housebreaking; the maximum punishment nowhere exceeds
imprisonment for twenty years.

AUTHORITIES.--Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law_; Stephen,
_History of Criminal Law_; Archbold, _Pleading and Evidence in Criminal
Cases_; Russell, _On Crimes and Misdemeanours_; Stephen, _Commentaries_.

[1] In Scots law, the word _hamesucken_ meant the feloniously beating or
assaulting a man in his own house.

BURGON, JOHN WILLIAM (1813-1888), English divine, was born at Smyrna on the
21st of August 1813, the son of a Turkey merchant, who was a skilled
numismatist and afterwards became an assistant in the antiquities
department of the British Museum. His mother was a Greek. After a few years
of business life, Burgon went to Worcester College, Oxford, in 1841, gained
the Newdigate prize, too