Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [264]
I saw a horrible sight, even though the torture had been mitigated…. The wretch had revealed his accomplices. He was garroted before he was put to the wheel. A winch set under the scaffold tightened a noose around the victim’s neck and he was strangled; for a long while the confessor and the hangman felt his heart to see whether the artery still pulsed, and the hideous blows were dealt only after it beat no longer…. I left, with my hair standing on end in horror.
What does this selection reveal about the punishment of crime in the eighteenth century? What impact did such descriptions have on the philosophes’ attitudes toward the administration of justice as it was carried out by their respective monarchical states?
The most common complaint about universities, especially from the philosophes, was the old-fashioned curriculum that emphasized the classics and Aristotelian philosophy and provided no training in the sciences or modern languages. Before the end of the century, this criticism led to reforms that introduced new ideas in the areas of physics, astronomy, and even mathematics into the universities. It is significant, however, that very few of the important scientific discoveries of the eighteenth century occurred in the universities.
Crime and Punishment
By the eighteenth century, most European states had developed a hierarchy of courts to deal with crimes. Except in England, judicial torture remained an important means of obtaining evidence before a trial. Courts used the rack, thumbscrews, and other instruments to obtain confessions in criminal cases. Punishments for crimes were often cruel and even spectacular. Public executions were a basic part of traditional punishment and were regarded as a necessary means of deterring potential offenders in an age when a state’s police forces were too weak to ensure the capture of criminals. Although nobles were executed by simple beheading, lower-class criminals condemned to death were tortured, broken on the wheel, or drawn and quartered (see the box above). The death penalty was still commonly used for property crimes as well as for violent offenses. By 1800, more than two hundred crimes were subject to the death penalty in England. In addition to executions, European states resorted to forced labor in mines, forts, and navies. England also sent criminals as indentured servants to colonies in the New World and, after the American Revolution, to Australia.
Appalled by the unjust laws and brutal punishments of their times, some philosophes sought to create a new approach to justice. The most notable effort was made by an Italian philosophe, Cesare Beccaria (CHAY-zuh-ray buh-KAH-ree-uh) (1738–1794). In his essay On Crimes and Punishments, written in 1764, Beccaria argued that punishments should serve only as deterrents, not as exercises in brutality: “Such punishments … ought to be chosen as will make the strongest and most lasting impressions on the minds of others, with the least torment to the body of the criminal.”12 Beccaria was also opposed to the use of capital punishment. It was spectacular, but it failed to stop others from committing crimes. Imprisonment—the deprivation of freedom—made a far more lasting impression. Moreover, capital punishment was harmful to society because it set an example of barbarism: “Is it not absurd that the laws, which detest and punish homicide, should, in order to prevent murder, publicly commit murder themselves?”
By the end of the eighteenth century, a growing sentiment against executions and torture led to a decline in both corporal