The number of thieves increases from the constant addition to the number of the objects of temptation, from the greater luxuries with which every individual is surrounded, from the increased rapidity with which goods may be transported to distant parts of the country, and from the more easy communication with the continent. Add all these causes, and many others, to a more vigilant administration of justice, which produces committals for the most trifling offences against property, and we shall easily understand how the return of committals may be increased, while the great bulk of the people is becoming more intelligent and more prudent.-M. Lucas, an advocate in the royal court at Paris, has collected, with much accuracy, a body of facts relating to France, Great Britain, the cantons of Geneva and Vaud, and the U. States, all of which tend to confirm the principles we have endeavored to establish that the higher crimes are lessened as men become more civilized and enlightened; and that, though offences against property may increase, crimes against the person are invariably diminished. With regard to France, this fact has been clearly proved by the calculations of M. Charles Dupin. In the northern departments of that country, where the inhabitants are the best instructed, the higher crimes against the person are rare; in the southern, where the people are very ignorant, the most frightful crimes are twice as numerous. But, again, it is remarkable, that, in the north-the richest and most enlightened portion of Francethe crimes against property exceeded, in 1826 and 1827, those in the south by 917. Of those crimes, however, the south exhibits the greatest number of atrocious examples, having 207 highway robberies, while the north had only 82. In the canton of Vaud, from 1803 to 1826, the total number of offences was 1914. Of these, there were only 52 of the highest crimes against the person. Of the offences against property, only 75 were of the gravest character of crime, such as burglary and highway robbery. In the canton of Geneva, from 1815 to 1826, there were 212 criminal processes, of which 27 only were for crimes against the person. The number of offences against property was 185, of which 145 were simple larcenies. In the state of Pennsylvania, from 1787 to 1825, the total number of convictions was 7397, of which 628 were for offences against the person. Of the remaining 6769 offences against property, 5338 were larcenies. In Spain, the catalogue of

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We thus see that, in Spain, the greater quantity of crime is precisely of an opposite character to that which exists in France, Great Britain, Switzerland and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, the crimes against property amount only to 2379. From these data, we may conclude that the greater proportion of offences amongst an ignorant people are those which proceed from the licentious and revengeful passions, unsubdued by the cultivation of the understanding, and the subjection of the will to true morality and pure religion. The greater portion of of fences among a rich and highly-cultivated people, are of that sort which proceed from the temptations of property, the accumulation of which is the result of capital and intellectual energy. (For further information, see Prison, and School.)

CRIMEA. (See Taurida.)

CRIMINAL LAW. [This article, to the paragraph on page 34, is from the German Lexicon.] In no department of legal science do so many different views prevail among jurisconsults, and in none have these views exercised so great an influence upon the theory and practice, as in this. The doctrine of the criminal law is, that the individual committing an unlawful act, must not only make amends to the party injured, but also be punished by the supreme authority of the state. The first question is, whether and how far the state is authorized to inflict punishment. This question cannot be decided by positive rules of law, because the object of the inquiry is to reconcile these rules with natural justice. States have, indeed, at all times, exercised the power of punishment, without waiting for or regarding such theoretical investigations, because it is obvious that, without the right of punishing, no state could exist. The different svstems, which have attempted to establish theoretically the right of punishment, may be brought under the following heads :

I. The system of vengeance. From the

*This comparative statement of offences in France, Switzerland, the U. States and Spain, rests upon the authority of an article in the Bulletin Universel, for September. The precise year taken for Spain is not mentioned.

opinion that he who has injured another, cannot complain of injustice, if a similar evil is inflicted upon himself, and the injured person, or, in case of murder, his family, would be disgraced, if they did not obtain satisfaction, arises the rude system of retaliation, which we meet with in so many nations; but, whilst those who take revenge must beware not to exceed the measure of the injury received, lest they become aggressors in their turn, they will be obliged to adhere literally to the rule of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth;" and in this state we find the criminal law subsisting among nations for a considerable time, and bloody revenge and retaliation become a common right and duty. (See Michaelis, On the Mosaic Law.) In this state of things, the punishment of offences against the law belongs not to the community, but to the individual, and the public authority is active only in putting limits to the continual exercise of revenge, and in providing means for terminating the hostilities among families, which threaten the nation itself with destruction. From this arises the system of composition. Offences are estimated at certain rates in money; and not only is the offender forced to pay the sum fixed, but the offended party must also receive it in satisfaction. With this degree of progress is connected the idea of a national peace, which is developed in various forms and relations, as the peace of the king, the peace of the court, &c., involving, at the same time, the acknowledgment of a public power, whose duty it is to protect and judge. We find the law of composition among the old Germans, as well as the nations of the Indian archipelago, and the tribes of American savages. The next step is the acknowledgment of the principle, that the community is bound to prevent crimes. The right of revenge passes into the hands of the state, which does not wait for the complaint of the offended party, but takes upon itself the duty of the accuser. The theory which next succeeds is,

II. The system of deterring. By the punishment of the offender, others are to be deterred from similar acts. The punishment is, therefore, inflicted publicly; and the more horrible the crime, the more effort is made to confirm the popular abhorrence of it by severe penalties. This system is liable to the most weighty objections. It cannot be allowable to torment or put to death a human being, simply with the view that others may receive from his sufferings such an impression, as

to be proof against the temptation to commit crime. In point of fact, this end has never been attained, and would require a scale of punishments offensive to sound reason. The mere fear of punishment is of very little weight. Men are kept from crime principally by the natural abhorrence of wrong, heightened by a good education and good example. If the plan of deterring should be carried through consistently, it would compel us to proportion punishment rather to the temptation to commit crimes than to their magnitude. (See Feuerbach's Revision der Grundsätze des peinl. Rechts, Erfurt, 1799-Revision of the Principles of Penal Law.) With regard to capital punishments, more particularly, the system of deterring fell by degrees into disrepute, after the marquis Beccaria (On Crimes and Punishments, London, 1770), and a great many other learned men, had declared themselves for,

III. The system of prevention, which is ingeniously defended by the Hessian minister Von Grolman (Grundsätze der Criminalrechtswissenschaften, Giessen, 1798

Principles of the Science of Criminal Law). Every crime contains, if man is considered as a consistent being, the expression of a principle of conduct, and, accordingly, besides the present transgression of the law, a threat of a repetition of the offence. The community is, therefore, entitled to take measures of prevention against it, which, if the injury done is irreparable, may extend to the deprivation of life. This system may be said to afford the true reason for punishment in general. It may, however, be objected to it, that this provision against future crimes is not really punishment, and that the punishment must needs be omitted, if this presumption of the future offences is refuted by the particular circumstances of the case. This principle, moreover, admits of no scale of punishment, because the means of effectual prevention must always be the same death or imprisonment for life. The direction which the science of natural law had taken, at this period, seeking for the foundation of every right in a contract, led to,

IV. The system of compact, which asserts that, by becoming a member of the state, every individual has, by tacit compact, bound himself to submit to punishment, if the society choose to inflict it. As, however, no one can be bound by a contract to any thing which is not right in itself, the lawfulness of punishment cannot be shown in this mamier. Fichte, there

fore, in his original way, modified this theory. He proceeded upon the principle that, by trespassing upon the right of others, the criminal deprived himself of the claim to be treated as a rational being, since the rights of a free agent depend on his respect for those of others. Every crime, therefore, he says, justifies the expulsion of the offender from human society. The compact, by which the punishment is determined, is consequently in favor of those who receive a lighter punishment than such expulsion. They acquire a right, by suffering some determined evil, to be admitted again into civil society. Much of this theory is true, but the real existence of such a compact seems to be wanting.

V. At the same time, the theory of atonement was introduced by Klein and others. The criminal does injury in two ways; 1. to the person who is the immediate subject of the wrong, for which he has to make him amends according to the rules of private law; and, 2. by the bad example afforded by the diminished respect for the laws of the state, for which he is answerable to the community. This latter injury is compensated by the punishment, which vindicates the authority of the law in the minds of the people. This theory has, in later times, been further developed, with great ingenuity, by Schultz (Entwickelung der philosoph. Principien des bürgerl. und peinl. Rechts, 1813 -Developement of the philosophical Principles of Civil and Criminal Law), and by Martin (Lehrbuch des Criminalrechts, 1819-1825-Compendium of Criminal

Law).

VI. The theory of psychological constraint, by Feuerbach, is founded upon the system of deterring, with the addition of this position-that the threatening of punishment, in general, is lawful, because it forbids no one to do any thing which he can have a right to do; and this menace renders punishment lawful in case of an offence occurring, because the individual knew beforehand what he had to expect. This theory is exposed to most of the objections against the theory of deterring, and the grounds on which it rests often fail in particular cases.

VII. The principle of moral correction, has been little used as the basis of the right to punish. It has for its end to correct, by punishment, in the criminal himself, those unlawful propensities which impelled him to crime. It is undeniably correct, so far as this, that the punishment ought never to be such as to make the moral correction of the criminal impossi

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ble, by the annihilation of his sense of honor, by exposing him to corruption in the society of other criminals, and destroying his ability to support himself in an honest manner. But it is evident, on the other hand, that the sentiments of men, and their moral reformation, cannot be the direct object of legislation, from the very circumstance, that this effect is not of a kind to be ascertained; but to produce an outward habit (for instance, to dispose the idle to labor, the drunkard to sobriety, &c.), is practicable.

Finally, VIII. The theory of retaliation has been adopted, since the time of Kant, by almost all the German philosophers, but, at the same time, by very few lawyers. It is founded upon the principles, that the state ought to suffer no wrong within itself; that every unlawful action ought to be annihilated, and is annihilated when made to revert on the author; and that the latter suffers no injustice by being treated in the same way as he has treated others. This retaliation is not, however, a literal one. It inflicts not the same evil on the criminal which he has done to another; but it seeks for a generic notion of the offence, and applies, according to this, the principle of the criminal against himself. This affords, at the same time, a measure for punishment, which no other principle of penal law affords, though it still requires that the degree of punishment, in particular cases, should be fixed by positive law.

We have thus set forth the theories on the subject of criminal legislation. In no branch of law has legislation been at all times so active as in this. The influence of theory has extended even to the forms of process, and the civilization of nations always manifests itself early by the improvement of the criminal law. Criminal law was first treated scientifically in Italy, but remained in a very rude state till the middle of the 16th century. The dreadful abuses in the administration of criminal justice in Germany and France, gave occasion to the two great reforms introduced by the penal code of Charles V, of 1532, and the criminal ordinance of Francis I, of 1539. This branch of jurisprudence now assumed a more systematic character. The ordinance of Charles V greatly improved the forms of process, but retained, according to the spirit of the times, cruel punishments, and even torture. Of the points of criminal law, which, in recent times, have given rise to much diversity of opinion, the following are of particular practical importance:-1. The right of punishing flagrant

crimes without the authority of an express law. Those who acknowledge the authority of a natural law, affirm the existence of such a right, and divide criminal actions into those which are bad in themselves (delicta juris naturalis), or, as the English law terms them, mala in se, and actions which are of themselves indifferent, but are subjected to a penalty by particular laws (delicta juris positivi), or, as the English law terms them, mala prohibita. Crimes of the first class, as murder, theft, &c., must be every where punished, even without a positive law; but those of the second, as contraband trade, are punishable only when made penal by express enactment. Feuerbach and others, however, acknowledge no right of punishment without an express law. 2. With the preceding is nearly connected the question -how far it is the right or duty of the state to punish crimes, which have been committed in foreign countries. On this point, in addition to the difficulties attending the main question, there exists a great difference of opinion as to the laws by which such crimes are to be judged, whether by the laws of the foreign country, or of that to which the individual belongs. 3. What power should be given to the judge to vary the punishment according to the different circumstances attending the offence? The tendency, in modern times, is to define crimes and their punishments so exactly as to leave nothing to the discretion of the judge, and to enable every man to see what he has to expect from a violation of the law. It is doubtful whether so much precision is generally advantageous, since it almost necessarily produces an unequal distribution of punishment, the question whether it shall be light or severe frequently depending on a little difference in the age of the offender, the amount of property stolen, &c.; so that a penny more or less may make a difference of several years' confinement in a penitentiary; or the difference of a day, in the age of the culprit, may decide whether he shall be punished with a few stripes, or deprived of his liberty for years, or of his life. 4. One of the most difficult points is the just estimation of injuries done to the honor of another, which involves the great question of the liberty of the press. The most important differences of opinion, however, are those which prevail with regard to criminal process. From the representation given above of the principles and the developement of penal law, it is evident that criminal proceedings have always been

founded at first upon private accusations, in regard to which almost the same principles prevail as those observed in civil actions. In the course of time, this mode is superseded by a public accusation on the part of the state, appearing by an attorney, to prosecute the offence. Upon this principle are founded the criminal proceedings of the English courts, and of the French courts since the revolution. With this may be united the public trial by jury, which has found so many adherents in modern times. Its fundamental character consists in this, that the party accused remains merely passive, and waits for the charge to be proved. The consequence is, that the sentence must be pronounced from a view of probabilities, and depends, therefore, more on a knowledge of men, and the deductions of a sound judgment, than on technical rules. It has been considered the safest mode of trying offences, in particular, as it prevents the dangers arising from the influence of the higher officers of the state over judges deriving their salaries from the sovereign, by referring the question of guilt or innocence to the verdict of men taken immediately from among the people, i. e. jurors. The German criminal proceedings are directed principally, it may be said solely, to the end of obtaining from the accused a confession of the deed, and of its circumstances, by inquisitory process. This admits neither of an accuser nor of a public trial, but the judge must inquire of the accused himself, and obtain from him, if possible, by a skilful combination of the circumstances, as well as by awakening the voice of conscience, complete truth. What is in Germany the chief business of the judge, belongs, in France, to the juge instructeur, and, in England, to justices of the peace, as police officers, whose investigations afford, in common cases, the materials for the final trial. The opponents of the trial by jury allege, as a chief reason for their opposition, that, when the preparatory process affords no certain results, the subsequent trial is attended by the same uncertainty.

To the preceding article, taken from the German Lexicon, we have to add a few suggestions growing out of the practice of the common law, which constitutes the basis of the institutions of the U. States, as well as of England. The general theory of the common law is, that all wrongs are divisible into two species; first, civil or private wrongs; secondly, criminal or public wrongs. The former are to be redressed by private suits, or remedies in