BATTERY, in Law, is the unlawful beating of another. The least touching of another's person wilfully, or in anger, is a battery, for the law cannot draw the line between different degrees of violence, and therefore totally prohibits the first and lowest stage of it; every man's person being sacred, and no other having a right to meddle with it, in any the slightest manner. Upon a similar principle, the Cornelian law de injuriis prohibited pulsation as well as verberation; distinguishing verberation, which was accompanied with pain, from pulsation, which was attended with none. But battery is in some cases justifiable or lawful; as where one having authority, a parent or master, bestows moderate correction on his child, his scholar, or his apprentice. It is justifiable on the principle of self-defence; for if one man strikes another, or only assaults him, the latter may strike in his own defence, and if sued for it, may plead that it was the plaintiff's own original assault which occasioned it. It is likewise justifiable in defence of goods or possession, and in the exercise of an office, as that of church-warden or beadle; but the person pleading such justification in a civil suit, or in a criminal prosecution, must be prepared to instruct that he has observed the moderamen inculpatae tutelae. By reason of these and other grounds of justification, battery is defined the unlawful beating of another; and the remedy is, as for assault, by action of trespass or damages, in which the jury will or ought to give adequate compensation.