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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
The reason for translating afresh Beccaria’s ‘Dei Delitti e delle Pene’ (‘Crimes and Punishments’) is, that it is a classical work of its kind, and that the interest which belongs to it is still far from being merely historical. It was translated into English long ago; but the change in the order of the several chapters and paragraphs, which the work underwent before it was clothed in its final dress, is so great, that the new translation and the old one really constitute quite different books.
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CHAPTER I. BECCARIA’S LIFE AND CHARACTER.
CHAPTER I. BECCARIA’S LIFE AND CHARACTER.
The ‘Dei Delitti e delle Pene’ was published for the first time in 1764. It quickly ran through several editions, and was first translated into French in 1766 by the Abbé Morellet, since which time it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, not excluding Greek and Russian. The author of the book was a native of Milan, then part of the Austrian dominions, and under the governorship of Count Firmian, a worthy representative of the liberal despotism of Maria Theresa and her chief
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CHAPTER II. THE GENERAL INFLUENCE OF BECCARIA ON LEGISLATION.
CHAPTER II. THE GENERAL INFLUENCE OF BECCARIA ON LEGISLATION.
It is not easy in the days of a milder administration of penal laws than a century ago the most sanguine could have dreamed of to do full justice to those who laboured, as Beccaria and his friends did, at the peril of their lives and liberties, for those very immunities which we now enjoy. We cannot conceive that it should ever have been necessary to argue against torture, or that it should have been a bold thing to do so; still less can we conceive that it should ever have had its defenders, or
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CHAPTER III. THE INFLUENCE OF BECCARIA IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER III. THE INFLUENCE OF BECCARIA IN ENGLAND.
Whatever improvement our penal laws have undergone in the last hundred years is due primarily to Beccaria, and to an extent that has not always been recognised. Lord Mansfield is said never to have mentioned his name without a sign of respect. Romilly referred to him in the very first speech he delivered in the House of Commons on the subject of law reform. And there is no English writer of that day who, in treating of the criminal law, does not refer to Beccaria. Even the idea of public utility
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CHAPTER IV. THE PROBLEMS OF PENOLOGY.
CHAPTER IV. THE PROBLEMS OF PENOLOGY.
If we would bring to the study of Beccaria’s treatise the same disposition of mind with which he wrote it, we must enter upon the subject with the freest possible spirit of inquiry, and with a spirit of doubtfulness, undeterred in its research by authority however venerable, by custom however extended, or by time however long. It has been from too great reverence for the wisdom of antiquity that men in all ages have consigned their lives and properties to the limited learning and slight experien
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TO THE READER.
TO THE READER.
Some remnants of the laws of an ancient conquering people, which a prince who reigned in Constantinople some 1,200 years ago caused to be compiled, mixed up afterwards with Lombard rites and packed in the miscellaneous volumes of private and obscure commentators—these are what form that set of traditional opinions which from a great part of Europe receive nevertheless the name of laws; and to this day it is a fact, as disastrous as it is common, that some opinion of Carpzovius, some old custom p
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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.
Men for the most part leave the regulation of their chief concerns to the prudence of the moment, or to the discretion of those whose interest it is to oppose the wisest laws; such laws, namely, as naturally help to diffuse the benefits of life, and check that tendency they have to accumulate in the hands of a few, which ranges on one side the extreme of power and happiness, and on the other all that is weak and wretched. It is only, therefore, after having passed through a thousand errors in ma
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CHAPTER II. THE ORIGIN OF PUNISHMENTS—THE RIGHT OF PUNISHMENT.
CHAPTER II. THE ORIGIN OF PUNISHMENTS—THE RIGHT OF PUNISHMENT.
From political morality, unless founded on the immutable sentiments of mankind, no lasting advantage can be hoped. Whatever law deviates from these sentiments will encounter a resistance which will ultimately prevail over it, just in the same way as a force, however slight, if constantly applied, will prevail over a violent motion applied to any physical body. If we consult the human heart we shall therein discover the fundamental principles of the real right of the sovereign to punish crimes. N
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CHAPTER III. CONSEQUENCES.
CHAPTER III. CONSEQUENCES.
The first consequence of these principles is, that the laws alone can decree punishments for crimes, and this authority can only rest with the legislator, who represents collective society as united by a social contract. No magistrate (who is part of society) can justly inflict punishments upon another member of the same society. But since a punishment that exceeds the legally fixed limit is the lawful punishment plus another one, a magistrate can, under no pretext of zeal or the public good, ad
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CHAPTER IV. INTERPRETATION OF THE LAWS.
CHAPTER IV. INTERPRETATION OF THE LAWS.
There is also a fourth consequence of the above principles: that the right to interpret penal laws cannot possibly rest with the criminal judges, for the very reason that they are not legislators. The judges have not received the laws from our ancestors as a family tradition, as a legacy that only left to posterity the duty of obeying them, but they receive them from living society, or from the sovereign that represents it and is the lawful trustee of the actual result of men’s collective wills;
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CHAPTER V. OBSCURITY OF THE LAWS.
CHAPTER V. OBSCURITY OF THE LAWS.
If the interpretation of laws is an evil, it is clear that their obscurity, which necessarily involves interpretation, must be an evil also, and an evil which will be at its worst where the laws are written in any other than the vernacular language of a country. For in that case the people, being unable to judge of themselves how it may fare with their liberty or their limbs, are made dependent on a small class of men; and a book, which should be sacred and open to all, becomes, by virtue of its
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CHAPTER VI. IMPRISONMENT.
CHAPTER VI. IMPRISONMENT.
An error, not less common than it is contrary to the object of society—that is, to the consciousness of personal security—is leaving a magistrate to be the arbitrary executor of the laws, free at his pleasure to imprison a citizen, to deprive a personal enemy of his liberty on frivolous pretexts, or to leave a friend unpunished in spite of the strongest proofs of his guilt. Imprisonment is a punishment which, unlike every other, must of necessity precede the declaration of guilt; but this distin
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CHAPTER VII. PROOFS AND FORMS OF JUDGMENT.
CHAPTER VII. PROOFS AND FORMS OF JUDGMENT.
There is a general theorem which is most useful for calculating the certainty of a fact, as, for instance, the force of the proofs in the case of a given crime:— 1. When the proofs of a fact are dependent one on another—that is to say, when each single proof rests on the weight of some other—then the more numerous the proofs are, the smaller is the probability of the fact in question, because the chances of error in the preliminary proofs would increase the probability of error in the succeeding
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CHAPTER VIII. WITNESSES.
CHAPTER VIII. WITNESSES.
It is a great point in every good system of laws to determine exactly the credibility of witnesses and the proofs of guilt Every reasonable man—that is, every man with a certain connection between his ideas and with feelings like those of other men—is capable of bearing witness. The true measure of his credibility is only the interest he has in speaking or in not speaking the truth; so that nothing can be more frivolous than to reject the evidence of women on the pretext of their feebleness, not
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CHAPTER IX. SECRET ACCUSATIONS.
CHAPTER IX. SECRET ACCUSATIONS.
Palpable but consecrated abuses, which in many nations are the necessary results of a weak political constitution, are Secret Accusations. For they render men false and reserved, and whoever may suspect that he sees in his neighbour an informer will see in him an enemy. Men then come to mask their real feelings, and by the habit of hiding them from others they at last get to hide them from themselves. Unhappy they who have come to that; who, without clear and fixed principles to guide them, wand
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CHAPTER X. SUGGESTIVE INTERROGATIONS—DEPOSITIONS.
CHAPTER X. SUGGESTIVE INTERROGATIONS—DEPOSITIONS.
Our laws prohibit suggestive (leading) questions in a lawsuit: those, that is (according to the doctors of law), which, instead of applying, as they should do, to the genus in the circumstances of a crime, refer to the species ; those, in other words, which from their immediate connection with a crime suggest to the accused a direct answer. Questions, according to the criminal lawyers, ought, so to speak, ‘to envelop the main fact spirally and never to attack it in a direct line.’ The reasons fo
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CHAPTER XI. OATHS.
CHAPTER XI. OATHS.
A contradiction between the laws and the natural feelings of mankind arises from the oaths which are required of an accused, to the effect that he will be a truthful man when it is his greatest interest to be false; as if a man could really swear to contribute to his own destruction, or as if religion would not be silent with most men when their interest spoke on the other side. The experience of all ages has shown that men have abused religion more than any other of the precious gifts of heaven
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CHAPTER XII. TORTURE.
CHAPTER XII. TORTURE.
A cruelty consecrated among most nations by custom is the torture of the accused during his trial, on the pretext of compelling him to confess his crime, of clearing up contradictions in his statements, of discovering his accomplices, of purging him in some metaphysical and incomprehensible way from infamy, or finally of finding out other crimes of which he may possibly be guilty, but of which he is not accused. A man cannot be called guilty before sentence has been passed on him by a judge, nor
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CHAPTER XIII. PROSECUTIONS AND PRESCRIPTIONS.
CHAPTER XIII. PROSECUTIONS AND PRESCRIPTIONS.
As soon as the proofs of a crime and its reality are fully certified, the criminal must be allowed time and opportunity for his defence; but the time allowed must be so short as not to interfere with the speediness of his punishment, which, as we have seen, is one of the principal restraints from crime. A false philanthropy seems opposed to this shortness of time; but all doubt will vanish, on reflection that the more defective any system of law is, the greater are the dangers to which innocence
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CHAPTER XIV. CRIMINAL ATTEMPTS, ACCOMPLICES, IMPUNITY.
CHAPTER XIV. CRIMINAL ATTEMPTS, ACCOMPLICES, IMPUNITY.
It does not follow, because the laws do not punish intentions, that therefore a crime begun by some action, significative of the will to complete it, is undeserving of punishment, although it deserves less than a crime actually committed. The importance of preventing an attempt at a crime justifies a punishment; but, as there may be an interval between the attempt and the execution, the reservation of a greater punishment for a consummated crime may present a motive for its non-completion. The s
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CHAPTER XV. THE MILDNESS OF PUNISHMENTS.
CHAPTER XV. THE MILDNESS OF PUNISHMENTS.
From the simple consideration of the truths hitherto demonstrated it is evident that the object of punishment is neither to torment and inflict a sensitive creature nor to undo a crime already committed. Can he, whose function it is, so far from acting from passion, to tranquillise the private passions of his fellows, harbour in the body politic such useless cruelty, the instrument either of furious fanatics or of weak tyrants? Shall perchance the shrieks of an unhappy wretch call back from neve
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CHAPTER XVI. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
CHAPTER XVI. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
This useless prodigality of punishments, by which men have never been made any better, has driven me to examine whether the punishment of death be really useful and just in a well organised government. What kind of right can that be which men claim for the slaughter of their fellow-beings? Certainly not that right which is the source of sovereignty and of laws. For these are nothing but the sum-total of the smallest portions of individual liberty, and represent the general will, that is, the agg
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CHAPTER XVII. BANISHMENT AND CONFISCATIONS.
CHAPTER XVII. BANISHMENT AND CONFISCATIONS.
Whosoever disturbs the public peace, or obeys not the laws, that is, the conditions under which men bear with and defend one another, ought to be excluded from society, that is, to be banished from it. Banishment, it would seem, should be employed in the case of those against whom, when accused of an atrocious crime, there is a great probability but not a certainty of guilt; but for this purpose a statute is required, as little arbitrary and as precise as possible, condemning to banishment any m
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CHAPTER XVIII. INFAMY.
CHAPTER XVIII. INFAMY.
Infamy is a sign of public disapprobation, depriving a criminal of the good-will of his countrymen, of their confidence, and of that feeling almost of fraternity that a common life inspires. It does not depend upon the laws. Hence the infamy which the laws inflict should be the same as that which arises from the natural relations of things, the same as that taught by universal morality, or by that particular morality, which depends on particular systems, and sets the law for ordinary opinions or
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CHAPTER XIX. THE PROMPTNESS OF PUNISHMENTS.
CHAPTER XIX. THE PROMPTNESS OF PUNISHMENTS.
The more speedily and the more nearly in connection with the crime committed punishment shall follow, the more just and useful it will be. I say more just, because a criminal is thereby spared those useless and fierce torments of suspense which are all the greater in a person of vigorous imagination and fully conscious of his own weakness; more just also, because the privation of liberty, in itself a punishment, can only precede the sentence by the shortest possible interval compatible with the
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CHAPTER XX. CERTAINTY OF PUNISHMENTS—PARDONS.
CHAPTER XX. CERTAINTY OF PUNISHMENTS—PARDONS.
One of the greatest preventives of crimes is, not the cruelty of the punishments attached to them, but their infallibility, and consequently that watchfulness on the part of the magistrates and that inexorable severity on the part of the judge which, to be a useful virtue, must coincide with a mild system of laws. The certainty of a punishment, moderate though it be, will ever make a stronger impression than the fear of another, more terrible, perhaps, but associated with the hope of impunity; f
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CHAPTER XXI. ASYLUMS OF REFUGE.
CHAPTER XXI. ASYLUMS OF REFUGE.
There remain two questions for me to examine: the first, whether asylums of refuge are just, and whether international agreements of extradition are expedient or not. There should be no spot within the boundaries of any country independent of the laws. Every citizen should be followed by their power, as every substance is followed by its shadow. There is only a difference of degree between impunity and the right of asylum; and as the effective influence of punishment consists more in its inevita
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CHAPTER XXII. OF PROSCRIPTION.
CHAPTER XXII. OF PROSCRIPTION.
The second question is, whether it is expedient to place a reward on the head of a known criminal, and to make of every citizen an executioner by arming him against the offender. Either the criminal has fled from his country or he is still within it. In the first case the sovereign encourages the commission of a crime and exposes its author to a punishment, being thereby guilty of an injury and of an usurpation of authority in the dominions of another, and authorising other nations to do the sam
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CHAPTER XXIII. PROPORTION BETWEEN CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS.
CHAPTER XXIII. PROPORTION BETWEEN CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS.
Not only is it the general interest that crimes should not be committed, but that they should be rare in proportion to the evils they cause to society. The more opposed therefore that crimes are to the public welfare, and the more numerous the incentives to them, the stronger should be the repellent obstacles. This principle accordingly establishes the necessity of a certain proportion between crimes and punishments. If pleasure and pain are the motors of sensitive beings, if the invisible lawgi
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CHAPTER XXIV. THE MEASURE OF PUNISHMENTS.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE MEASURE OF PUNISHMENTS.
We have seen that the true measure of crimes is the injury done to society. This is one of those palpable truths which, however little dependent on quadrants or telescopes for their discovery, and fully within the reach of any ordinary intelligence, are yet, by a marvellous combination of circumstances, only recognised clearly and firmly by some few thinkers, belonging to every nationality and to every age. But Asiatic ideas, and passions clothed with authority and power, have, generally by impe
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CHAPTER XXV. THE DIVISION OF PUNISHMENTS.
CHAPTER XXV. THE DIVISION OF PUNISHMENTS.
Some crimes tend directly to the destruction of society or to the sovereign who represents it; others affect individual citizens, by imperilling their life, their property, or their honour; whilst others, again, are actions contrary to the positive or negative obligations which bind every individual to the public weal. Any action that is not included between the two above-indicated extremes can only be called a crime or punished as such by those who find their interest in so calling it. The unce
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CHAPTER XXVI. CRIMES OF HIGH TREASON.
CHAPTER XXVI. CRIMES OF HIGH TREASON.
The first class of crimes—that is, the worst, because they are the most injurious to society—are those known as crimes of high treason. Only tyranny and ignorance, which confound words and ideas of the clearest meaning, can apply this name, and consequently the heaviest punishment, to different kinds of crimes, thus rendering men, as in a thousand other cases, the victims of a word. Every crime, be it ever so private, injures society; but every crime does not aim at its immediate destruction. Mo
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CHAPTER XXVII. CRIMES AGAINST PERSONAL SECURITY—ACTS OF VIOLENCE—PUNISHMENTS OF NOBLES.
CHAPTER XXVII. CRIMES AGAINST PERSONAL SECURITY—ACTS OF VIOLENCE—PUNISHMENTS OF NOBLES.
After crimes of high treason come crimes opposed to the personal security of individuals. This security being the primary end of every properly constituted society, it is impossible not to affix to the violation of any citizen’s right of personal security one of the severest punishments that the laws allow. Some crimes are injuries to a man’s person, others to his property, and the former should certainly be punished by corporal punishments. Offences, therefore, against personal security and lib
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CHAPTER XXVIII. OF INJURIES AND OF HONOUR.
CHAPTER XXVIII. OF INJURIES AND OF HONOUR.
Injuries that are personal and affect a man’s honour—that is, the fair share of favour that he has a right to expect from others—should be punished with disgrace. There is a remarkable contradiction between the civil laws, which set so jealous and supreme a guard upon individual life and property, and the laws of so-called honour , which set opinion above everything. This word honour is one of those that have served as the basis for long and brilliant argumentations, without any fixed or permane
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CHAPTER XXIX. DUELS.
CHAPTER XXIX. DUELS.
From this necessity of the favour of other people arose private duels, which sprang up precisely in an anarchical state of the laws. It is said they were unknown to antiquity, perhaps because the ancients did not meet suspiciously armed in the temples, the theatres, or with friends; perhaps because the duel was an ordinary and common sight, presented to the people by gladiators, who were slaves or low people, and freemen disdained to be thought and called private gladiators. In vain has it been
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CHAPTER XXX. THEFTS.
CHAPTER XXX. THEFTS.
Thefts without violence should be punished by fine. He who enriches himself at another’s expense ought to suffer at his own. But, as theft is generally only the crime of wretchedness and despair, the crime of that unhappy portion of mankind to whom the right of property (a terrible, and perhaps not necessary right [67] ) has left but a bare subsistence; and as pecuniary penalties increase the number of criminals above the number of crimes, depriving the innocent of their bread in order to give i
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CHAPTER XXXI. SMUGGLING.
CHAPTER XXXI. SMUGGLING.
Smuggling is a real crime against the sovereign and the nation; but its punishment should not be one of disgrace, because its commission incurs no disgrace in public opinion. But why does this crime never entail disgrace upon its author, seeing that it is a theft against the prince, and consequently against the nation? I answer, that offences which men do not consider can be committed against themselves do not interest them enough to produce public indignation against their perpetrator. Smugglin
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CHAPTER XXXII. OF DEBTORS.
CHAPTER XXXII. OF DEBTORS.
The good faith of contracts and the security of commerce compel the legislator to assure to creditors the persons of insolvent debtors. But I think it important to distinguish the fraudulent from the innocent bankrupt, the former of whom should receive the same punishment as that assigned to false coiners, since it is no greater crime to falsify a piece of coined money, the pledge of men’s mutual obligations, than to falsify those obligations themselves. But the innocent bankrupt—he who, after a
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CHAPTER XXXIII. OF THE PUBLIC TRANQUILLITY.
CHAPTER XXXIII. OF THE PUBLIC TRANQUILLITY.
Lastly, among the crimes of the third kind are especially those which disturb the public peace and civic tranquillity; such as noises and riots in the public streets, which were made for the convenience of men and traffic, or fanatical sermons that excite the easily roused passions of the curious multitude. For their passions gather force from the number of hearers, and more from a certain obscure and mysterious enthusiasm, than from clear and quiet reasoning, which never has any influence over
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CHAPTER XXXIV. OF POLITICAL IDLENESS.
CHAPTER XXXIV. OF POLITICAL IDLENESS.
Wise governments suffer not political idleness in the midst of work and industry. I mean by political idleness that existence which contributes nothing to society either by its work or by its wealth; which gains without ever losing; which, stupidly admired and reverenced by the vulgar, is regarded by the wise man with disdain, and with pity for the beings who are its victims; which, being destitute of that stimulus of an active life, the necessity of preserving or increasing the store of worldly
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CHAPTER XXXV. SUICIDE AND ABSENCE.
CHAPTER XXXV. SUICIDE AND ABSENCE.
Suicide is a crime to which a punishment properly so called seems inadmissible, since it can only fall upon the innocent or else upon a cold and insensible body. If the latter mode of punishing the crime makes no more impression on the living than would be made by inflicting violence on a statue, the other mode is unjust and tyrannical, inasmuch as political freedom necessarily presupposes the purely personal nature of punishment. Men love life only too much, and everything that surrounds them c
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CHAPTER XXXVI. CRIMES OF DIFFICULT PROOF.
CHAPTER XXXVI. CRIMES OF DIFFICULT PROOF.
There are some crimes which, are at the same time frequent in society and yet difficult to prove, as adultery, pederasty, infanticide. Adultery is a crime which, politically considered, derives its force and direction from two causes, namely, from the variable laws in force among mankind, and from that strongest of all attractions which draws one sex towards the other. [70] Had I to address nations still destitute of the light of religion, I would say that there is yet another considerable diffe
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CHAPTER XXXVII. OF A PARTICULAR KIND OF CRIME.
CHAPTER XXXVII. OF A PARTICULAR KIND OF CRIME.
The reader of this treatise will perceive that I have omitted all reference to a certain class of crime, which has deluged Europe with human blood; a crime which raised those fatal piles, where living human bodies served as food for the flames, and where the blind multitude sought a pleasant spectacle and a sweet harmony from the low dull groans, emitted by wretched sufferers from volumes of black smoke, the smoke of human limbs, whilst their bones and still palpitating entrails were scorched an
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CHAPTER XXXVIII. FALSE IDEAS OF UTILITY.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. FALSE IDEAS OF UTILITY.
False ideas of utility entertained by legislators are one source of errors and injustice. It is a false idea of utility which thinks more of the inconvenience of individuals than of the general inconvenience; which tyrannises over men’s feelings, instead of arousing them into action; which says to Reason, ‘Be thou subject.’ It is a false idea of utility which sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling drawback; which would deprive men of the use of fire because it burns
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CHAPTER XXXIX. OF FAMILY SPIRIT.
CHAPTER XXXIX. OF FAMILY SPIRIT.
Such fatal and legalised iniquities as have been referred to have been approved of by even the wisest men and practised by even the freest republics, owing to their having regarded society rather as an aggregate of families than as one of individuals. Suppose there to be 100,000 individuals, or 20,000 families, of five persons each, including its representative head: if the association is constituted by families, it will consist of 20,000 men and 80,000 slaves; if it be an association of individ
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CHAPTER XL. OF THE TREASURY.
CHAPTER XL. OF THE TREASURY.
There was a time when nearly all penalties were pecuniary. Men’s crimes were the prince’s patrimony; attempts against the public safety were an object of gain, and he whose function it was to defend it found his interest in seeing it assailed. The object of punishment was then a suit between the treasury, which exacted the penalty, and the criminal: it was a civil business, a private rather than a public dispute, which conferred upon the treasury other rights than those conferred upon it by the
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CHAPTER XLI. THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES—OF KNOWLEDGE—MAGISTRATES—REWARDS—EDUCATION.
CHAPTER XLI. THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES—OF KNOWLEDGE—MAGISTRATES—REWARDS—EDUCATION.
It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. This is the chief aim of every good system of legislation, which is the art of leading men to the greatest possible happiness or to the least possible misery, according to calculation of all the goods and evils of life. But the means hitherto employed for this end are for the most part false and contrary to the end proposed. It is impossible to reduce the turbulent activity of men to a geometrical harmony without any irregularity or confusion.
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CHAPTER XLII. CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER XLII. CONCLUSION.
From all that has gone before a general theorem may be deduced, of great utility, though little comformable to custom, that common lawgiver of nations. The theorem is this: ‘In order that every punishment may not be an act of violence, committed by one man or by many against a single individual, it ought to be above all things public, speedy, necessary, the least possible in the given circumstances, proportioned to its crime, dictated by the laws.’...
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