CONTENTS.

Previous
James Anson Farrer
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
BECCARIA’S LIFE AND CHARACTER.
State of Lombardy under Count Firmian—The state of criminal law—Torture still in use—The abolition of torture before Beccaria—Beccaria not a lawyer by profession—Autobiographical letter of Beccaria to the AbbÉ Morellet—Influence on Beccaria of Montesquieu and Helvetius—His philosophy of life and truth—His friends, the Verri—Connection with Pietro Verri—The CaffÉ periodical—Reception of the ‘Dei Delitti’ in Paris—Translation of it by Morellet—Commentary by Voltaire—The Swiss medal—Beccaria’s fear of ecclesiastical persecution a motive for occasional obscurity—Feeling in Venice against the author—Facchinei’s criticism—Protection of Count Firmian—Adverse criticism by contemporary lawyers—Ramsay’s letter to Diderot, illustrative of the despair of reform—Beccaria’s journey to Paris—His speedy return—Enmity and jealousy of Pietro Verri—Beccaria’s invitation to St. Petersburg—His lectures on political economy, and later life 1
CHAPTER II.
THE GENERAL INFLUENCE OF BECCARIA ON LEGISLATION.
Present inconceivability of torture due to Beccaria—How far he was the first to write against it—Torture first abolished in England—Beccaria’s influence in Russia—Quotations from his treatise in Catharine’s instruction for the new code—Beccaria’s influence in France; Tuscany; Austria; Pennsylvania—Beccaria the first advocate of the abolition of capital punishment—Relative severity of death and other penalties—Slight relation of crime to punishment—Reasons why capital punishment is always more uncertain than other penalties—Cases accounting for its uncertainty—The efficiency of a punishment its real test—Futility of discussing the general right of punishment—Instances of the abolition of capital punishment in ancient and modern times—The argument for its abolition the same as that for the abolition of torture 29
CHAPTER III.
THE INFLUENCE OF BECCARIA IN ENGLAND.
General debt of English law to Beccaria—English utilitarianism due to Beccaria—His influence first traceable in Blackstone—Fallacy of old criminal law in making the amount of temptation the measure of punishment—Eden the first to expose it in his ‘Principles of Penal Law’—Attitude of men of letters to the criminal law, as of Goldsmith, Lord Kames, and Fielding—First attempt at law reform by Sir W. Meredith—Constant opposition of the House of Lords—Effect on reform of Madan’s ‘Executive Justice’ and Paley’s chapter on Crimes and Punishments—Relation of Paley to Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough—Paley’s defence of English law—His approval of the suggestion of throwing murderers into a den of wild beasts—Howard’s ideas of reform and contribution to it—Bad effect of the French Revolution in England—Romilly’s original idea of reform—His Privately Stealing Bill—His criticism of Paley—His Shoplifting Bill rejected by the Lords—The pillory defended by Lord Ellenborough—Capital punishment for forgery by Lord Tenterden—Rapid changes after the Reform Bill—The triumph of Beccaria’s principles 46
CHAPTER IV.
THE PROBLEMS OF PENOLOGY.
The spirit of Beccaria’s work—The slow progress of penology as a science—Its difficulties—Confusion of guilty and innocent—Relation of intention to crime—Objects and animals once part of the criminal world—Penal laws the expression of moral sentiments, and also the cause of them—Tendency of actions to remain immoral when they have ceased to be penal—Illustration from suicide and infanticide—The Equality of punishment, its Analogy and Proportion to crime, as principles of penal law—The object of punishment—The difficulties of the deterrent-and-reformative theory—The object of law to regulate natural vindictiveness—Traceable historically to this purpose—The measure of punishment on this theory—Absence of any such measure at present—Possibility of a fixed scale of crime and punishment illustrated by the Chinese code—The question of aggravated penalties for re-convictions—The custom contrary to the spirit of the laws: its evil results—Limitations to the universality of the custom—Its error of principle proved by number of re-convictions—The preventiveness of punishment diminished by its great uncertainty—Frequent changes of English penal system—Failure of present system to reform or deter—Punishment itself a cause of crime—Its possible relaxation—Punishments most fitted for injuries to the person, or for offences like cruelty to animals—Indirect preventives of crime—A Prisoners’ Fund—Cumulative sentences—Conclusion 69
BECCARIA’S ‘CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS,’ TRANSLATED.
CHAP.
To the Reader 111
I. Introduction 117
II. The Origin of Punishments—Right of Punishment 121
III. Consequences 124
IV. Interpretation of the Laws 125
V. Obscurity of the Laws 130
VI. Imprisonment 132
VII. Proofs and Forms of Judgments 134
VIII. Witnesses 138
IX. Secret Accusations 139
X. Leading Questions 144

‘All men, whether singly or collectively, naturally do wrong, nor is there any law which will prevent it. For every kind of punishment has been successively tried by mankind, if haply they might suffer less injury from malefactors. And it is probable that in their origin punishments for even the gravest crimes are comparatively mild, but that, as they are disregarded, most of them come in course of time to be punishments of death; yet this in its turn is also disregarded. Either, therefore, some greater terror than death must be invented, or death at least serves not as a deterrent, men being led to risk it, sometimes by poverty, which emboldens them through necessity, sometimes by power, which makes them overreaching and insolent; or sometimes by some other circumstance which subordinates all a man’s passions to some one passion that is insuperable and dominant.… And it is simply impossible, and a very foolish idea, to think that, when human nature is firmly bent on doing anything, it can be deterred from it either by force of law or by any other terror.’—Thucydides.

‘How many condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes themselves!’—Montaigne.

CRIMES
AND
PUNISHMENTS.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Clyx.com


Top of Page
Top of Page