Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 03.djvu/242

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CBIMINAL LAW 198 CEIMINOLOGY bian principalities; and war was de- clared by the Porte in October, 1853; by France and England in 1854, and by Sardinia in 1855. A French and English fleet entered the Baltic and captured Bomarsund and one of the Aland Islands, and in the S. the allies landed at Varna, under Lord Raglan and Mai'shal St. Arnaud as commanders-in-chief. While the allies were making preparations Prussia and Austria demanded the evacu- ation of the Danubian principalities, and an evacuation being ordered by Nicholas, "for strategic reasons," the principalities were provisionally occupied by the Aus- trians. It soon became obvious that the Crimea must be the seat of the war, and 50,000 French and English troops with 6,000 Turks were landed at Eupatoria (September, 1854). Five days later the battle of Alma was won by the allies (Sept. 20), and the march continued to- ward the E. side of Sebastopol. Soon after St. Arnaud died and was succeeded by Canrobert. The siege of Sebastopol was begun by a grand attack which proved a failure, and the Russians under Liprandi re- taliated by attacking the English at Balaklava (Oct. 25), but were defeated with heavy loss. It was at this battle that the famous, but useless, charge was made by the Light Brigade. A second attack at Inkermann was again repulsed by the allies, but the siege works made slow progress during the winter, in which the ill-supplied troops suffered great pri- vations. The death of Nicholas and suc- cession of Alexander II., in March, 1855, brought no change of policy. Canrobert resigTied in favor of P61issier; and shortly after an unsuccessful attack on those parts of the fortifications knov?n as the Malakhoff and Redan Lord Raglan died, and was succeeded by Simpson. The bombardment was continued, and in September the French successfully stormed the Malakhoff, the simultaneous attack on the Redan by the British prov- ing a failure. The Russians, however, then withdrew from the city to the N. forts and the allies took possession. The chief subsequent event was the capture of Kars in Asia, by the Russians after a splendid defense by the Turks under C^en- e^ al Willianis. By this time, however, tne allies had practical possession of the Crimea, and overtures of peace were gladly accepted. A treaty was accord- ingly concluded at Paris on April 27, 1856, by which the independence of the Ottoman Empire was guaranteed. CRIMINAIi LAW, that branch of law which deals with crimes and their pun- ishment and is in use in one shape or another wherever human society exists. The earliest form of penal law seems to have rested on a principle of private vengeance, and to have taken shape in the lex talionis, the law of retaliation formulated in the familiar passage in Exodus which lays down as a fit punish- ment an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The severity of this doctrine was mitigated when the right of personal vengeance was satisfied by a money pay- ment, a custom which can be traced in the early laws of the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and which is particularly characteristic of early Teutonic systems of penal law. According to these a family is made pecuniarily responsible for the offenses of its members, or accepts a fine as a compensation for the life of a lost kinsman. When a man was killed, a part of this fine was paid to the king or head of the community to compensate the clan's loss of a fighting member; and in the distinction established between in- juries done to the individual and injuries done to the community, the foundation of a system of criminal law was laid. The sovereign power in a community or state took up the wrongs of private persons and exercised a right of public venge- ance. Legislation upon this principle had for its object the intimidation of the wrongdoer, and was specially char- acterized by the great variety and se- verity of its punishments. It was not until the 18th century that a more en- lightened jurisprudence prevailed. Bec- caria's work, "On Crimes and Punish- ments," published in 1764, has exercised a strong influence on criminal legislation by urging the claims of criminals to humane consideration, and examining the basis in morals upon which ciiminal law rests. The modem view gains ground that crime is to be looked upon as a dis- ease of the social body, and that the remedy is to be looked for rather in im- proved education and social well-being than in a repressive S3'stem of arbitrary punishments. The criminal law of a particular state is the body of legal rules affecting the commission and prosecution of crimes. CRIMINOLOGY, a term denoting the branch of anthropology which deals with crime and criminals, sometimes called "criminal anthropology." The science is largely based on the researches and views of Dr. Cesare Lombroso, born of Jewish stock at Verona in 1836, who, after serving as an army surgeon and holding posts as professor of mental dis- eases at Pavia and director of a lunatic asylum at Pesaro, was appointed Pro- fessor of Forensic Medicine and Psy- chiatry at Turin. His great work is "The Delinquent Man" (1875), in which his theory of criminology is expounded. The criminologist holds that the con-