Beccaria

“ It is remarkable, however, that while some of the early Fathers were the undoubted precursors of Beccaria, their teaching, unlike that of the philosophers in the eighteenth century, had little or no appreciable influence in mitigating the severity of the penal code. Indeed, the more carefully the Christian legislation of the Empire is examined, and the more fully it is compared with what had been done under the influence of Stoicism by the Pagan legislators, the more evident, I think, it will appear that the golden age of Roman law was not Christian, but Pagan. ”

“ The history of Italy shows us, that Beccaria’s opinions on the subject were not exactly correct, for, while the upper classes challenged each other to single combat, we find other grades of society, even artists, avenging their wrongs with the stiletto. From this charge, we must, however, exonerate 321 Michael Angelo Caravaggio, who, to avenge the insult offered to him by Arpino, who had presumed to criticise some of his productions, sent him a challenge, which was rejected on the plea of disparity of condition ”

“ Marquis Beccaria is going to leave us very soon being obliged to return to Milan: Count Veri will at the same time set out for England. I'll be oblig'd to you for a copy or two of the book printed in holland you mentioned in your letter you may send it by some private opportunity to Miss Wilkes, with, proper directions. A gentleman of our Society should be glad to get 2 copies of Baskervilles' virgil in octavo. ”

“ Foremost among these, as Odo now learned, were many of his own countrymen. In his talks with Vivaldi he first explored the course of Italian thought and heard the names of the great jurists, Vico and Gravina, and of his own contemporaries, Filangieri, Verri and Beccaria. Vivaldi lent him Beccaria's famous volume and several numbers of the "Caffe," the brilliant gazette which Verri and his associates were then publishing in Milan, and in which all the questions of the day, theological, economic and literary, were discussed with a freedom possible only under the lenient Austrian rule. ”

“ Bandello iii., nov. 17) . Firenzuola in his Asino d’Oro makes them play the part of the begging priests in Apulejus.
[1067] Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. p. 357. Burigozzo, ibid. p. 431 sqq.
[1068] Allegretto, in Murat. xxiii. col. 856 sqq. The quotation was: ‘Ecce venio cito et velociter. Estote parati.’
[1069] Matteo Villani, viii. cap. 2 sqq. He first preached against tyranny in general, and then, when the ruling house of the Beccaria tried to have him murdered, he began to preach a change of government and constitution, and forced the Beccaria to fly from Pavia (1357) . See Petrarch, Epp. ”

“ It is so in all walks of life—in art, in politics, in science. Every new idea will rouse against itself naturally and inevitably the opposition of the accustomed thoughts. This is so true, that when Cesare Beccaria opened the great historic cycle of the classic school of criminology, he was assaulted by the critics of his time with the same indictments which were brought against us a century later. ”

“ The few select friends who made life at Milan just supportable were Pietro and Alessandro Verri, Frisi, and some others. Pietro Verri was ten years older than Beccaria, and it was at his instance that the latter wrote his first treatise on a subject which then demanded some attention, namely, ‘The Disorders and Remedies of the Coinage.’ This work was published two years before the ‘Crimes and Punishments,’ but though it provoked much discussion at the time, it has long since ceased to have any interest. ”

“ And he, seeing the concourse of the people, and the faith they bare him, began to denounce vice, and specially usury, revenge, and ill-behavior of women; and thereupon he began to speak against the disorderly lordship of the tyrants; and in a short time he brought the women to modest manners, and the men to renunciation of usury and feuds.' The only citizens of Pavia who resisted his eloquence were the Beccaria family, who at that time ruled Pavia like despots. ”

“ But today we learned that the Holy Office was advised of her presence here, and of the reason of her banishment from Lombardy; and this fresh danger has forced her to implore your Highness's protection."
Andreoni went on to explain that the publication of her father's book was the immediate cause of Fulvia's persecution. The Origin of Civilisation, which had been printed some months previously in Amsterdam, had stirred Italy more profoundly than any book since Beccaria's great work on Crime and Punishment. ”

“ A fanatical assassin, believing that he shall serve God by killing his prince, consults his confessor on this case of conscience; the confessor is guilty of sacrilege if he save the life of his sovereign.
This horrible absurdity is one of the unhappy consequences of the continual opposition, which hath subsisted for so many ages, between the Ecclesiastical and Civil Law. Mankind have in a thousand instances been suspended between the crimes of sacrilege and high treason, and the distinctions of right and wrong have been buried in a chaos, from which they are not yet emerged. ”

“ You want their labour, and not their catechism?” Faction is quite a different thing. It always happens, that a persecuted sect degenerates into faction. The oppressed naturally unite and animate each other; and are generally more industrious in strengthening their party, than their persecutors in their extermination. They must either destroy or be destroyed. So it happened after the persecution excited in 304, by Galerius, in the two last years of Dioclesian. The Christians, having been favoured by that emperor during eighteen years, were become too numerous and too rich to be exterminated. ”

“ MUST we go to the end of the world, must we have recourse to the laws of China, to learn how frugal we ought to be of human blood? It is now more than four thousand years that the tribunals of that empire have existed; and it is also more than four thousand years that the meanest subject, at the extremity of the empire, hath not been executed without first transmitting his case to the emperor, who causes it to be thrice examined by one of his tribunals ”

“ Ah! those cruel formalities of justice are a cloak to tyranny, they are a secret language, a solemn veil, intended to conceal the sword by which we are sacrificed to the insatiable idol of despotism. Murder, which they would represent to us as an horrible crime, we see practised by them without repugnance or remorse. ”

“ If every individual be bound to society, society is equally bound to him, by a contract, which from its nature, equally binds both parties. This obligation, which descends from the throne to the cottage, and equally binds the highest and lowest of mankind, signifies nothing more, than that it is the interest of all, that conventions, which are useful to the greatest number, should be punctually observed. The violation of this compact by any individual, is an introduction to anarchy. ”

“ Who can defend himself from calumny, armed with that impenetrable shield of tyranny, secrecy? What a miserable government must that be, where the sovereign suspects an enemy in every subject, and, to secure the tranquillity of the public, is obliged to sacrifice the repose of every individual? ”

“ Mankind love life too well; the objects that surround them; the seducing phantom of pleasure and hope, that sweetest error of mortals, which makes men swallow such large draughts of evil, mingled with a very few drops of good, allure them too strongly, to apprehend that this crime will ever be common from its unavoidable impunity. The laws are obeyed through fear of punishment, but death destroys all sensibility. ”

“ I shall be told, that perpetual slavery is as painful a punishment as death, and therefore as cruel. I answer, that if all the miserable moments in the life of a slave were collected into one point, it would be a more cruel punishment than any other ”

“ When the rule of right which ought to direct the actions of the philosopher, as well as the ignorant, is a matter of controversy, not of fact, the people are slaves to the magistrates. The despotism of this multitude of tyrants, is more insupportable, the less the distance is between the oppressor and the oppressed; more fatal than that of one, for the tyranny of many is not to be shaken off, but by having recourse to that of one alone. It is more cruel, as it meets with more opposition, and the cruelty of a tyrant is not in proportion to his strength, but to the obstacles that oppose him. ”

“ All trials should be public, that opinion, which is the best, or perhaps, the only cement of society, may curb the authority of the powerful, and the passions of the judge; and that the people may say, “We are protected by the laws; we are not slaves:” a sentiment which inspires courage, and which is the best tribute to a sovereign who knows his real interest. ”

“ Shall not a people, who pique themselves on their politeness, pride themselves also on their humanity? Shall they obstinately persist in their inhumanity, merely because it is an ancient custom? Reserve, at least, such cruelty for the punishment of those hardened wretches, who shall have assassinated the father of a family, or the father of his country; but that a young person, who commits a fault which leaves no traces behind it, should suffer equally with a parricide; is not this an useless piece of barbarity? ”

“ What must men think, when they see wise magistrates and grave ministers of justice, with indifference and tranquillity, dragging a criminal to death, and whilst a wretch trembles with agony, expecting the fatal stroke, the judge, who has condemned him, with the coldest insensibility, and perhaps with no small gratification from the exertion of his authority, quits his tribunal to enjoy the comforts and pleasures of life? ”

“ Surely, the groans of the weak, sacrificed to the cruel ignorance, and indolence of the powerful; the barbarous torments lavished, and multiplied with useless severity, for crimes either not proved, or in their nature impossible, the filth and horrors of a prison, increased by the most cruel tormentor of the miserable, uncertainty, ought to have roused the attention of those whose business is to direct the opinions of mankind. ”

“ Why should a man be reduced to the terrible alternative, either of offending God, or of contributing to his own immediate destruction? The laws which require an oath in such a case, leave him only the choice of becoming a bad christian, or a martyr. For this reason, oaths become, by degrees, a mere formality, and all sentiments of religion, perhaps the only motive of honesty in the greatest part of mankind, are destroyed. ”

“ Without any certain and fixed principles to guide them, they fluctuate in the vast sea of opinion, and are busied only in escaping the monsters which surround them; to those, the present is always embittered by the uncertainty of the future; deprived of the pleasures of tranquillity and security, some fleeting moments of happiness, scattered thinly through their wretched lives, console them for the misery of existing. Shall we, amongst such men, find intrepid soldiers, to defend their king and country? ”

“ Shall the law of the provinces be always at variance with the law in the capital? Shall a man be right in Brittany, and wrong in Languedoc? Nay, there are as many laws as there are towns; and even in the same parliament, the maxims of one chamber are not the maxims of another. ”

“ Shall we then believe, that light diffused among the people is more destructive than darkness, and that the knowledge of the relations of things can ever be fatal to mankind?
Ignorance may indeed be less fatal than a small degree of knowledge, because this adds, to the evils of ignorance, the inevitable errors of a confined view of things on this side the bounds of truth; but a man of enlightened understanding, appointed guardian of the laws, is the greatest blessing that a sovereign can bestow on a nation. Such a man is accustomed to behold truth, and not to fear it ”

“ THE punishment of robbery, not accompanied with violence, should be pecuniary. He who endeavours to enrich himself with the property of another, should be deprived of part of his own. But this crime, alas! is commonly the effect of misery and despair; the crime of that unhappy part of mankind, to whom the right of exclusive property (a terrible, and perhaps unnecessary right) has left but a bare existence. ”

“ Happy are those few nations, who have not waited till the slow succession of human vicissitudes, should, from the extremity of evil, produce a transition to good; but by prudent laws have facilitated the progress from one to the other! And how great are the obligations due from mankind to that philosopher, who, from the obscurity of his closet, had the courage to scatter amongst the multitude the seeds of useful truths, so long unfruitful! ”

“ This infamous test of truth is a remaining monument of that ancient and savage legislation, in which trials by fire, by boiling water, or the uncertainty of combats, were called Judgments of God; as if the links of that eternal chain, whose beginning is in the breast of the first cause of all things, could ever be disunited by the institutions of men. The only difference between torture, and trials by fire and boiling water is, that the event of the first depends on the will of the accused ”