Montesquieu and Penal Law Reform in England
- Montesquieu and Penal Law Reform in England
Footnotes
1. Esprit des lois (Oeuvres complètes, ed. Laboulaye), III, p. 89.
2. Ibid., IV, p. 67.
3. Ibid., III, p. 241.
4. Ibid., IV, p. 67.
5. Ibid., IV, p. 323.
6. Ibid., III, p. 240.
7. Beccaria admits this in his preface.
1. Voltaire, A.B.C., 15e entretien.
2. Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765–9, book IV, chap. i.
3. Cf. D. M. Clark, British Opinion and the American Revolution, New Haven, 1930, introduction; J. G. Phillimore, History of England during the Reign of George the Third, London, 1863, I, chap. i; J. Murdoch, A History of Constitutional Reform in Great Britain and Ireland, Glasgow, 1885, p. 26; Alexander Andrews, The Eighteenth Century, London, 1856, passim.
4. Commentaries, book IV, chap. vi (end). The punishment of male traitors was far more terrible.
5. Espril des lois, III, p. 251.
6. Blackstone, Commentaries, IV, p. 13, remarks: “So dreadful a list [i.e., of one hundred and sixty capital offences] instead of diminishing, increases the number of offences. The injured, through compassion, will often forbear to prosecute; juries, through compassion, will sometimes forget their oaths, and either acquit the guilty or mitigate the nature of the offence; and judges, through compassion, will respite one half of the convicts and recommend them to the royal mercy.”
7. Esprit des lois, III, p. 257.
8. The Rambler, no. 114, 1751.
9. The Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xxvii.
10. Commentaries, IV, p. 13.
11. Historical Law Tracts (Criminal Law), 1776.
12. Increase of Robberies by the Increase of the Metropolis (anon. in Chalmers’s British Essayists, XXII, pp. 336–40). This writer makes considerable use of Montesquieu and Fielding. Cf. Esprit des lois, III, p. 258: “It is a great evil in our country that we award the same punishment to a man convicted of highway robbery, and to one who both robs and murders.”
13. Commentaries, IV, pp. 16–7; Esprit des lois, III, p. 251.
14. Cavendish’s Debates of the House of Commons, II, p. 89. Fox seconded the motion, which was carried, and the committee was appointed.
15. James Beattie, Elements of Moral Science, 1790–3, I, p. 320.
16. T. Paine, Rights of Man, 1791.
17. Brooke Boothby, Observations on the Appeal to the Old Whigs (in Comparative Display, 1793, II, p. 479).
18. Vindication of the Rights of Men (in Comparative Display, II, p. 417).
1. E.g., no. 9 of the Centinel, Nov. 12, 1757, II, pp. 98–101; and James Beattie, Elements of Moral Science, I, pp. 317–9.
2. Commentaries, IV, p. 17.
3. Esprit des lois, IV, p. 323.
4. Ibid., IV, p. 67: “Tout ce que je dis est puisé dans la Nature et est très favorable à La liberté du citoyen (not ‘de l’homme’].” In volume III, p. 246, Montesquieu again says: “Suivons la Nature, qui a donné aux hommes la honte comme leur fléau;” but he goes on to show chat this “natural” shame only exists in free and enlightened countries; and he insists everywhere on the relativity of criminal law in general to government, not to Nature.
5. System of the Principles of the Law of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1760), p. 48.
6. Commentaries, book IV, chap. i.
7. Principles of Penal Law, London, 1771, pp. 6–7.
1. W. A. Dunning, History of Political Theories, New York, 1902, II, p. 416.
2. Cf. Esprit des lois, III, p. 241: “Extremely happy men, and extremely unhappy men, are equally inclined to be severe.”
3. The Journal and Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland, London, 1861–2, I, p. xiv. Cf. also J. Field’s Life of Howard, 1850, pp. 223, 288.
4. Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. of 1786, chap. v, p. 441.
5. Ibid., p. 533.
6. Ibid., p. 533.
7. Ibid., p. 541.
8. This is to be contrasted with Esprit des lois, III, p. 261: “I was about to say that torture might be expedient in despotic governments. … But I hear the voice of Nature crying out against me.”
9. Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 552.
10. Works, X, p...
