Crimes and Punishments / Including a New Translation of Beccaria's 'Dei Delitti e delle Pene' E-Book
James Anson Farrer
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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. The object of the preliminary chapters is to place the historical importance of the original in its just light, and to increase the interest of the subjects it discusses. The Translator has abstained from all criticism or comment of the original, less from complete agreement with all its ideas than from the conviction that annotations are more often vexatious than profitable, and are best left to the reader to make for himself. There is scarcely a sentence in the book on which a commentator might not be prolix. To combine the maximum of perspicuity with the maximum of fidelity to the original has been the cardinal principle observed in the translation. But it would, of course, have been no less impossible than contrary to the spirit of the original to have attempted to render perfectly comprehensible what the author purposely wrapped in obscurity. A translation can but follow the lights and shades of the surface it reflects, rendering clear what is clear in the original, and opaque what is opaque.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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James Anson Farrer
Table of contents
PREFACE.
CONTENTS.
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS.
CHAPTER I. BECCARIA’S LIFE AND CHARACTER.
CHAPTER II. THE GENERAL INFLUENCE OF BECCARIA ON LEGISLATION.
CHAPTER III. THE INFLUENCE OF BECCARIA IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER IV. THE PROBLEMS OF PENOLOGY.
FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER X. SUGGESTIVE INTERROGATIONS—DEPOSITIONS.
CHAPTER XXIII. PROPORTION BETWEEN CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS.
CHAPTER XLI. THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES—OF KNOWLEDGE—MAGISTRATES—REWARDS—EDUCATION.
FOOTNOTES
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Crown 8vo. cloth extra, 7 s. 6 d.
PRIMITIVE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
By James A. Farrer.
‘A book which is really both instructive and amusing, and which will open a new field of thought to many readers.’— Athenæum.
‘An admirable example of the application of the scientific method and the working of the truly scientific spirit.’— Saturday Review.
CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W.
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS
INCLUDING A NEW TRANSLATION OF BECCARIA’S ‘DEI DELITTI & DELLE PENE’
BY JAMES ANSON FARRER
London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1880
All rights reserved
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.
The object of the preliminary chapters is to place the historical importance of the original in its just light, and to increase the interest of the subjects it discusses.
The Translator has abstained from all criticism or comment of the original, less from complete agreement with all its ideas than from the conviction that annotations are more often vexatious than profitable, and are best left to the reader to make for himself. There is scarcely a sentence in the book on which a commentator might not be prolix.
To combine the maximum of perspicuity with the maximum of fidelity to the original has been the cardinal principle observed in the translation. But it would, of course, have been no less impossible than contrary to the spirit of the original to have attempted to render perfectly comprehensible what the author purposely wrapped in obscurity. A translation can but follow the lights and shades of the surface it reflects, rendering clear what is clear in the original, and opaque what is opaque.
CONTENTS.
‘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.
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS.
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 minister, Kaunitz. Under Firmian’s administration a period of beneficial reforms began for Lombardy. Agriculture was encouraged, museums and libraries extended, great works of public utility carried on. Even the Church was shorn of her privileges, and before Firmian had been ten years in Lombardy all traces of ecclesiastical immunity had been destroyed; the jurisdiction of the Church, and her power to hold lands in mortmain were restricted, the right of asylum was abolished, and, above all, the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Let these few facts suffice to indicate the spirit of the immediate political surroundings in the midst of which Beccaria’s work appeared.
But, in spite of the liberalism of the Count, the penal laws and customs of Lombardy remained the same; and the cruel legal procedure by torture existed still, untouched by the salutary reforms effected in other departments of the Government. There was the preparatory torture, to extort confession from criminals not yet condemned; there was torture for the discovery of a criminal’s accomplices; and there was the extraordinary or greater torture, which preceded the execution of a sentence of death. It is true that torture could only be applied to crimes of a capital nature, but there was scarcely an act in the possible category of crimes that was not then punishable with death. Proofs of guilt were sought almost entirely from torture and secret accusations, whilst penalties depended less on the text of any known law than on the discretion—that is, on the caprice—of the magistrate.
It was this system that Beccaria’s little work destroyed, and had that been its only result, it would still deserve to live in men’s memories for its historical interest alone. For upon the legislation of that time, and especially upon that of Italy, this pamphlet on criminal law broke like a ray of sunlight on a dungeon floor, making even blacker that which was black before by the very brilliancy which it shed upon it. To Beccaria primarily, though not of course solely, belongs the glory of having expelled the use of torture from every legal tribunal throughout Christendom.
Frederick the Great had already abolished it in Prussia; [1] it had been discontinued in Sweden; it was not recognised in the military codes of Europe, and Beccaria said it was not in use in England. This was true generally, although the peine forte et dure, by which a prisoner who would not plead was subjected to be squeezed nearly to death by an iron weight, was not abolished till the year 1771. [2]
It is remarkable that a book which has done more for law reform than any other before or since should have been written by a man who was not a lawyer by profession, who was totally unversed in legal practice, and who was only twenty-six when he attacked a system of law which had on its side all authority, living and dead. Hume was not twenty-seven when he published his ‘Treatise on Human Nature,’ nor was Berkeley more than twenty-six when he published his ‘Principles of Human Knowledge.’ The similar precocity displayed by Beccaria is suggestive, therefore, of the inquiry, how far the greatest revolutions in the thoughts or customs of the world have been due to writers under thirty years of age.
The following letter by Beccaria to the Abbé Morellet in acknowledgment of the latter’s translation of his treatise is perhaps the best introduction to the life and character of the author. The letter in question has been quoted by Villemain in proof of the debt owed by the Italian literature of the last century to that of France, but from the allusions therein contained to Hume and the ‘Spectator’ it is evident that something also was due to our own. Beccaria had spent eight years of his youth in the college of the Jesuits at Parma, with what sense of gratitude this letter will show. The following is a translation of the greater part of it:—
Your letter has raised in me sentiments of the deepest esteem, of the greatest gratitude, and the most tender friendship; nor can I confess to you how honoured I feel at seeing my work translated into the language of a nation which is the mistress and illuminator of Europe. I owe everything to French books. They first raised in my mind feelings of humanity which had been suffocated by eight years of a fanatical education. I cannot express to you the pleasure with which I have read your translation; you have embellished the original, and your arrangement seems more natural than, and preferable to, my own. You had no need to fear offending the author’s vanity: in the first place, because a book that treats of the cause of humanity belongs, when once published, to the world and all nations equally; and as to myself in particular, I should have made little progress in the philosophy of the heart, which I place above that of the intellect, had I not acquired the courage to see and love the truth. I hope that the fifth edition, which will appear shortly, will be soon exhausted, and I assure you that in the sixth I will follow entirely, or nearly so, the arrangement of your translation, which places the truth in a better light than I have sought to place it in.
As to the obscurity you find in the work, I heard, as I wrote, the clash of chains that superstition still shakes, and the cries of fanaticism that drown the voice of truth; and the perception of this frightful spectacle induced me sometimes to veil the truth in clouds. I wished to defend truth, without making myself her martyr. This idea of the necessity of obscurity has made me obscure sometimes without necessity. Add to this my inexperience and my want of practice in writing, pardonable in an author of twenty-eight, [3] who only five years ago first set foot in the career of letters.
D’Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, Buffon, Hume, illustrious names, which no one can hear without emotion! Your immortal works are my continual study, the object of my occupation by day, of my meditation in the silence of night. Full of the truth which you teach, how could I ever have burned incense to worshipped error, or debased myself to lie to posterity? I find myself rewarded beyond my hopes in the signs of esteem I have received from these celebrated persons, my masters. Convey to each of these, I pray you, my most humble thanks, and assure them that I feel for them that profound and true respect which a feeling soul entertains for truth and virtue.
My occupation is to cultivate philosophy in peace, and so to satisfy my three strongest passions, the love, that is, of literary fame, the love of liberty, and pity for the ills of mankind, slaves of so many errors. My conversion to philosophy only dates back five years, and I owe it to my perusal of the ‘Lettres Persanes.’ The second work that completed my mental revolution was that of Helvetius. The latter forced me irresistibly into the way of truth, and aroused my attention for the first time to the blindness and miseries of humanity.
… I lead a tranquil and solitary life, if a select company of friends in which the heart and mind are in continual movement can be called solitude. This is my consolation, and prevents me feeling in my own country as if I were in exile.
My country is quite immersed in prejudices, left in it by its ancient masters. The Milanese have no pardon for those who would have them live in the eighteenth century. In a capital which counts 120,000 inhabitants, you will scarcely find twenty who love to instruct themselves, and who sacrifice to truth and virtue. My friends and I, persuaded that periodical works are among the best means for tempting to some sort of reading minds incapable of more serious application, are publishing in papers, after the manner of the English ‘Spectator,’ a work which in England has contributed so much to increase mental culture and the progress of good sense. The French philosophers have a colony in this America, and we are their disciples because we are the disciples of reason, &c.
Thus, the two writers to whom Beccaria owed most were Montesquieu and Helvetius. The ‘Lettres Persanes’ of the former, which satirised so many things then in custom, contained but little about penal laws; but the idea is there started for the first time that crimes depend but little on the mildness or severity of the punishments attached to them. ‘The imagination,’ says the writer, ‘bends of itself to the customs of the country; and eight days of prison or a slight fine have as much terror for a European brought up in a country of mild manners as the loss of an arm would have for an Asiatic.’ [4] The ‘Esprit des Lois,’ by the same author, probably contributed more to the formation of Beccaria’s thoughts than the ‘Lettres Persanes,’ for it is impossible to read the twelfth book of that work without being struck by the resemblance of ideas. The ‘De L’Esprit’ of Helvetius was condemned by the Sorbonne as ‘a combination of all the various kinds of poison scattered through modern books.’ Yet it was one of the most influential books of the time. We find Hume recommending it to Adam Smith for its agreeable composition father than for its philosophy; and a writer who had much in common with Beccaria drew from it the same inspiration that he did. That writer was Bentham, who tells us that when he was about twenty, and on a visit to his father and stepmother in the country, he would often walk behind them reading a book, and that his favourite author was Helvetius.
