An Essay on Crimes and Punishments

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J. Almon, 1767 - 133 páginas
 

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Página 20 - Whoever reads, with a philosophic eye, the history of nations, and their laws, will generally find that the ideas of virtue and vice, of a good or a bad citizen, change with the revolution of ages...
Página 1 - In every human society," says the celebrated Marquis Beccaria, " there is an effort continually tending to confer on one part the height of power and happiness, and to reduce the other to the extreme of weakness and misery. The intent of good laws is to oppose this effort, and to diffuse their influence universally and equally.
Página 80 - Those compacts and conditions which all would propose and observe in those moments when private interest is silent, or combined with that of the public. What are the natural sentiments of every person concerning the punishment of death? We may read them in the contempt and indignation with which every one looks on the executioner, who is nevertheless an innocent executor of the public will, a good citizen, who contributes to the advantage of society, the instrument of the general security within,...
Página 70 - ... mankind to be terrified at the approach of the smallest inevitable evil, whilst hope, the best gift of heaven, hath the power of dispelling the apprehension of a greater; especially if supported by examples of impunity, which weakness or avarice too frequently afford.
Página 7 - Montesquieu, that every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical; a proposition which may be made more general thus, every act of authority of one man over another for which there is not an absolute necessity is tyrannical.
Página 21 - The foregoing reflections authorise me to assert that crimes are only to be measured by the injury done to society. They err, therefore, who imagine that a crime is greater or less according to the intention of the person by whom it is committed; for this will depend on the actual impression of objects on the senses, and on the previous disposition of the mind; both which will vary in different persons, and even in the same person at different times according to the succession of ideas, passions,...
Página 20 - ... being weakened by time, which reduces all the phenomena of the natural and moral world to an equality, become, by degrees, the prudence of the age, and an useful instrument in the hands of the powerful or artful politician.
Página 44 - ... a degree, that occupying the mind entirely, it will compel the sufferer to use the shortest method of freeing himself from torment. His answer, therefore, will be an effect, as necessary as that of fire or boiling water; and he will accuse himself of crimes of which he is innocent. So that the very means employed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty, will most effectually destroy all difference between them.
Página 8 - Thus it was necessity that forced men to give up a part of their liberty; it is certain then, that every individual would choose to put into the public stock the smallest portion possible; as much only as was sufficient to engage others to defend it.
Página xvii - In the year 1652, a country woman, named Michelle Chaudron, of the little territory of Geneva, met the devil in her way from the city. The devil gave her a kifs, received her homage, and imprinted on her upper lip and on her right breaft, the mark which he is wont to beftow upon his favourites.

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