Criminal Sociology [38]
law against ``venus nefanda'' had fallen into abeyance through lapse of time and the multitude of offenders. Yet we see in our own days, as in France, that there are some who would oppose celibacy with no other remedy than a law passed for the purpose.
Since mediaeval times the increasing gentleness of manners has caused a diminution of crimes of blood, once so numerous that there was need of sundry ``truces'' and ``peaces,'' notwithstanding the harsh penalties of previous centuries. And Du Boys called Cettes simple because, after giving a table of shocking punishments in the Germany of his day (the fifteenth century), he marvelled that all these pains and torments had not prevented the increase of crimes.
Imperial Rome deluded herself with the idea that she could stamp out Christianity with punishments and tortures, which, however, only seemed to fan the flame. In the same way Catholic Europe hoped to extinguish Protestantism by means of vindictive persecution, and only produced the opposite effect, as always happens. If the Reformed faith does not strike root in Italy, France, and Spain, that must be explained by psychological reasons proper to those nations, independently of the stake and of massacres, for it did not strike root even when religious belief was liberated from its fetters. This does not prevent all governments in every land from continuing to believe that, in order to arrest the spread of certain political or social doctrines, there is nothing better than to pass exceptional penal laws, forgetting that, with ideas and prejudices just as with steam, compression increases the expansive force.
Popular education has swept away the so-called crimes of magic and witchcraft, though they had withstood the most savage punishments of antiquity and mediaeval times.
Blasphemy, in spite of the slitting of the nose, tongue, and lips, enacted by the penal laws, and continued in France from Louis XI. to Louis XV., was very common in the middle ages, being (like witchcraft, trances, and self-immurement) a pathological or abnormal manifestation of religious emotion, which in those times had an extraordinary development. And the habit of blasphemy diminished under the psychological and social evolution of our own days, precisely when it ceased to be punished. Or, rather, it continued to this day, as in Tuscany, where the Tuscan penal code (Art. 136), which survived until December 31, 1889, still punished it with five years' imprisonment. The illusion as to the efficacy of punishment is so deeply rooted that a proposal was made in the Senate, in 1875, to include this penalty in the new Italian penal code. And at Murcia, in Spain, trials for blasphemy have lately been re-established.
Mittermaier observed that, if in England and Scotland there were far fewer cases of false witness, perjury, and resistance to authority than in Ireland and on the Continent, this must be due in great measure to national character, which is one of the hereditary elements of normal as well as of abnormal and criminal life.
Thus even apart from statistics we can satisfy ourselves that crimes and punishments belong to two different spheres; but when statistics support the teaching of history, no doubt can remain as to the very slight (I had almost said the absence of any) deterrent effect of punishments upon crime.
We may indeed derive a telling proof from statistical records, by referring to the progress of repression in France, over a period of sixty years, as I have already done in my ``Studies'' previously quoted.
When we speak of the repression of crime, we must first of all distinguish between that which is due to the general character of penal legislation, more or less severe, and that which is secured by the administration by the judges of the law as it is. Now, so far as legislation is concerned, the growth of crime in France certainly cannot be attributed to the relaxation of punishment. The legislative reforms which have taken place, especially in 1832 and 1863, on the general revision of the penal code,
Since mediaeval times the increasing gentleness of manners has caused a diminution of crimes of blood, once so numerous that there was need of sundry ``truces'' and ``peaces,'' notwithstanding the harsh penalties of previous centuries. And Du Boys called Cettes simple because, after giving a table of shocking punishments in the Germany of his day (the fifteenth century), he marvelled that all these pains and torments had not prevented the increase of crimes.
Imperial Rome deluded herself with the idea that she could stamp out Christianity with punishments and tortures, which, however, only seemed to fan the flame. In the same way Catholic Europe hoped to extinguish Protestantism by means of vindictive persecution, and only produced the opposite effect, as always happens. If the Reformed faith does not strike root in Italy, France, and Spain, that must be explained by psychological reasons proper to those nations, independently of the stake and of massacres, for it did not strike root even when religious belief was liberated from its fetters. This does not prevent all governments in every land from continuing to believe that, in order to arrest the spread of certain political or social doctrines, there is nothing better than to pass exceptional penal laws, forgetting that, with ideas and prejudices just as with steam, compression increases the expansive force.
Popular education has swept away the so-called crimes of magic and witchcraft, though they had withstood the most savage punishments of antiquity and mediaeval times.
Blasphemy, in spite of the slitting of the nose, tongue, and lips, enacted by the penal laws, and continued in France from Louis XI. to Louis XV., was very common in the middle ages, being (like witchcraft, trances, and self-immurement) a pathological or abnormal manifestation of religious emotion, which in those times had an extraordinary development. And the habit of blasphemy diminished under the psychological and social evolution of our own days, precisely when it ceased to be punished. Or, rather, it continued to this day, as in Tuscany, where the Tuscan penal code (Art. 136), which survived until December 31, 1889, still punished it with five years' imprisonment. The illusion as to the efficacy of punishment is so deeply rooted that a proposal was made in the Senate, in 1875, to include this penalty in the new Italian penal code. And at Murcia, in Spain, trials for blasphemy have lately been re-established.
Mittermaier observed that, if in England and Scotland there were far fewer cases of false witness, perjury, and resistance to authority than in Ireland and on the Continent, this must be due in great measure to national character, which is one of the hereditary elements of normal as well as of abnormal and criminal life.
Thus even apart from statistics we can satisfy ourselves that crimes and punishments belong to two different spheres; but when statistics support the teaching of history, no doubt can remain as to the very slight (I had almost said the absence of any) deterrent effect of punishments upon crime.
We may indeed derive a telling proof from statistical records, by referring to the progress of repression in France, over a period of sixty years, as I have already done in my ``Studies'' previously quoted.
When we speak of the repression of crime, we must first of all distinguish between that which is due to the general character of penal legislation, more or less severe, and that which is secured by the administration by the judges of the law as it is. Now, so far as legislation is concerned, the growth of crime in France certainly cannot be attributed to the relaxation of punishment. The legislative reforms which have taken place, especially in 1832 and 1863, on the general revision of the penal code,