lights of civilization, which had grown dim through two centuries of oppression under Spanish misrule. Those provinces—the wealthiest in Italy—had been laid waste by foreign proconsuls, and when Maria Theresa of Austria took possession of them, she soon felt that in order to draw some profit from her newly-acquired dominions, all must be quickened into life again. The government of Austria was not so exclusively dependent, a century ago, on military despotism, as it is now. It was, so far as it went, a civilizing power, whilst the subject nations on the other hand, had not yet attained that consciousness of their rights, which now animates them against their oppressors. Although they bowed to the imperial authority in a common bond of federal submission, they still preserved a certain amount of self-administration. It was under such a state of things that the above-named youths were growing into manhood. They were in the habit of holding private meetings, where the wants of the people, the reforms needed in every branch of public administration, were freely discussed. In order to give utterance to their views, they published a periodical, Il Caffè, a sort of Italian Spectator, some of the best articles in which were from the pen of Beccaria. This publication, in which a variety of subjects bearing on moral and social improvement were treated with a manly tone, soon acquired celebrity at home and abroad, but unhappily it did not continue longer than two years (1764-66). The existing system of criminal law met, in that society of young reformers, with all the abhorrence of enlightened and noble-hearted men. The jurisprudence concerning trials and punishments, was then an indiscriminate maze of Roman traditions, of feudal customs and inquisitorial proceedings. Farinaccio, the most ruthless abettor of torture, was the greatest authority with lawyers and judges. Alessandro Verri, as patron of the prisoners in the municipal magistracy at Milan, had often witnessed with a bleeding heart the dreadful effects of the barbarity of the law. His brother Pietro felt the duty of a protest—the protest of science and humanity against iniquity—and his knowledge of the talents of Beccaria led him to choose the latter as the champion of so noble a cause. There were great obstacles to surmount. Although the imperial government allowed its subjects a certain extent of liberty in private thought, there was no freedom of the press, and a work, which was intended to attack the supercilious ignorance, and the barbarous routine of the judicial world, was sure to meet with persecution. Besides, Beccaria, though quick in thought, was exceedingly slow and. indolent, when trying to give it shape and expression. Verri acted upon his mind with all the interest of friendship, and the energy of his on resolute nature. The book—"On Crimes and Punishments"—was written in his rooms, and he used to transcribe, every evening, the blotted sheets left there by the writer, in order to present them, the day after, in a clear form to his friend, that he might be pleased with his own thoughts, and take courage to persevere in his generous undertaking. Thus, in about ten months the book was completed, and published at Leghorn, under a fictitious date, in the year 1764, when Beccaria was only 26 years old. The little anonymous volume, which scarcely exceeded in bulk a hundred pages of an octavo edition, acquired a world-wide fame, being repeatedly translated into French, German, Dutch, English, Spanish, and subsequently into Russian and modern Greek. Up to the end of the last century more than fifty editions of it were published. Voltaire made comments on it. Lord Mansfield never mentioned the name of Beccaria without some mark of respect; and from many a scientific circle medals and homages were tributed to the great vindicator of penal justice. Catherine of Russia offered him employment, which he declined, and the Encyclopedists invited him to Paris, where he was received with ovations, which he soon grew weary of, and sought to escape by hastening his return to his native country. Let us now take a survey of the doctrines which were the cause of so universal a success.—The chief merit of Beccaria is, that he applied plain common sense and practical reasoning to a branch of legislation, which had until then been monopolized by blind prejudice. Montesquieu and others had hinted at, rather than explained the subject. Beccaria unfolded it into a rational system of observation and demonstration. He established the right of punishing on the unfailing principle of social defence and public morality, deducing from it, with mathematical precision, the whole theory of the nature and application of punishments. "Every punishment," he says, "which exceeds the measure required by the preservation of public safety, is simply unjust." (Sec. ii.) We must here note, in a cursory way, that when Beccaria endeavours, at the very outset, to trace the origin of penal right, his judgment is influenced by the errors of his age. His speculations on the principle of right, his protopolitics, if we may say so, are as false, as his practical policy is sound. The French idea of a contrat social, considered as the arbitrary work of man, leads him to conceive social institutions as the result of mere utilitarian limitations to individual freedom. But we must also acknowledge, to the honour of the Italian writer, that his feelings are superior to the philosophy of his teachers. In spite of his utilitarian point of view, he shows himself an earnest advocate of morality and duty, whenever the two principles clash against one another. Thus he condemns impunity (Sec. xiv.) and pecuniary rewards (Sec. xxii.), offered for the discovery of criminals, as thoroughly immoral. Nor do we think the arguments, which Bentham opposed to Beccaria's views on the matter, have any weight soever, for the utility of punishing a criminal, cannot counterbalance the lasting mischief of a demoralizing legislation. Owing to his doctrine, that the infallibility of the penal sanction is of far greater importance than its ferocity (Sec. xx.), he strongly reproves, on the one side, every sort of penal immunities (asili, Sec. xxi.), and the power of forgiveness (grazia, Sec. xx.), in the sovereign, whilst, on the other, he demonstrates the uselessness of exaggerated severity in the legislator, and the mischievous effects of a penalty surpassing the limits of justice. Every excess in the degree of punishment is against the social end of penal law; it is a legal crime added to the crime which it assumes to check. Thence his theory against capital punishment. As regards the question of abstract right, his argument is defective, for it is grounded on the assumption that social justice results from the cession of a certain amount of individual rights.—Man, he says, has not the right to deprive himself of his own life, therefore society can have no right over it either.—We think the moral sanction against legal homicide is founded on far surer and higher grounds; but Beccaria felt in his heart that which his mind was unable fully to bear out by reasoning; and if his abstract theory is below the standard of the subject, his practical considerations on the uselessness of capital punishment have not yet been surpassed by any more convincing argument. He eloquently maintains that in a well-organized state of society, death is neither necessary, with respect to the danger which may proceed from the offender's surviving his crime, or salutary in the effect it may produce on others. Far from controlling evil passions, it promotes ferocity in the people, as is the case with all bloody spectacles; and it encourages, through the example of the law, those murderous tendencies which it was intended to extirpate from the heart of man. The whole experience of history is a confirmation of these truths and the conscience of mankind recognizes their justice. But inveterate prejudice is stronger than truth and conscience, and the abolition of capital punishment will yet for a long time remain a desideratum of moral philosophy. Such are Beccaria's thoughts on this important question.(Sec. xvi.)
Of a more immediate efficacy, were his remarks on the rational means of acquiring conviction, and pronouncing the verdict in criminal trials. All that he says in this section of his work is founded on irrefutable principles, and has opened the way to all modern treatises on penal jurisprudence. Wresting from the judge and the executor of the law all arbitrary power, he demanded the trial by jury (Sec. iii.), and insisted upon the exclusion of every magistrate, but the legislator himself, from the right of interpreting the laws, or modifying them in their application. (Sec. iv.)—The law must be universal; no privileges are compatible with a healthy development of social happiness.—Espionage, and secrecy in trials and punishments, are among the principal causes of falsehood, mistrust, and corruption. (Sec. ix.) Suggestive interrogations, mental and physical tortures, are to be altogether discarded as iniquitous and absurd. "By this method," he says, with cutting irony, speaking of physical torture, "it were easier for a mathematician than for a judge to solve the following problem:—Given the strength of muscle and the sensibility of fibre in an innocent man, to find the degree of pain that will make him plead guilty to a given crime."—In the classification of crimes, many of his remarks are true and forcibly expressed. He places high treason at the summit of the criminal scale; but he distinguishes an orderly and free state of society, governed by its own laws, from the condition of political slavery and starting from a superior
