An Essay on Crimes and Punishments: translated from the Italian, with a commentary attributed to Mons. de Voltaire, translated from the French.
Authors of source text
Contributions
- John Wilkes
- translator
- John Almon
- publisher
Related resources
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- Dei delitti e delle pene has translation
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- An Essay on Crimes and Punishments: translated from the Italian, with a commentary attributed to Mons. de Voltaire, translated from the French. paratext
Summary (extracted citations)
"If we look into history we shall find that laws… have been for the most part the work of the passions of a few… not dictated by a cool examiner of human nature, who knew how to collect in one point the actions of a multitude, and had this only end in view, the greatest happiness of the greatest number". “From what I have written results the following general theorem, of considerable utility, though not conformable to custom, the common legislator of nations. That a punishment may not be an act of violence, of one, or of many against a private member of society, it should be public, immediate, and necessary, the least possible in the case given, proportioned to the crime and determined by the laws”. “Every act of authority of one man over another, for which there is no absolute necessity, is tyrannical”.
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Notes
Url to Dublin edition, published by John Exshaw in 1777.
This translation, from the 6th Italian edition was the last to be extensively revised and corrected by its author, and was the first edition to include Voltaire's commentary. While the author's name was not mentioned, as in the Italian edition, it does appear in the translator's preface. An Italian version was also published in London by Pietro Molini, the brother of the French publisher, who helped to arrange the English translation.
The impact of this utilitarian analysis of criminal law on the Anglophone world was considerable. It influenced the thought and writings of David Hume, Lord Mansfield, Sir William Blackstone, Sir Frederick Morton Eden, Jeremy Bentham, Filippo Mazzei, and four American presidents (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison). Bentham cited Beccaria's treatise when discussing reward and punishment in his 'Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation', and almost certainly borrowed his famous phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" from Beccaria's Introduction (see above).
For a good account of its English translation history, see Rosamaria Loretelli, 'The First Translation of Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments. Uncovering the Editorial and Political contexts', in Diciottesimo Secolo, anno II (2017).
On the basis of Loretelli's indication of the close relationships between the publisher John Almon, the journalist-politician John Wilkes, the London-based publisher, Pietro Molini, Morellet and the Philosophes, as well as evidence of another translation by Wilkes, he is indicated here as a possible translator. Wilkes spent most of 1765–66 in Italy and Paris. There's also a small possibility the translation was by Henry Fuseli, translator of an associated work by Giacinto Dragonetti, 'Trattato delle Virtu e de’ premi' (1766). A bilingual edition was published in 1769 by John Almon.
For Beccaria's wider influence, including on American policy, see J. D. Bessler, 'The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria's Forgotten Influence on American Law', in Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy, vol.37, no.1 (2017); and M. Palumbo & E. Sidoli, eds., 'The Books that Made Europe' (2016), pp.248-249.