In the first part of his “Utopia” More severely criticises the economic conditions of his time in England, and adds some observations upon the criminality of that period.

Raphael Hythloday, whom More makes the speaker in his work, and through whom he expresses his own opinions, says:

“It chanced on a certain day, when I sat at the Cardinal’s table, there was also a certain lay man cunning in the laws of your realm. Who, I cannot tell whereof taking occasion, began diligently and earnestly to praise that strait and rigorous justice, which at that time was there executed upon felons, who, as he said, were for the most part twenty hanged together upon one gallows. And, seeing so few escaped punishment, he said he could not choose but greatly wonder and marvel, how and by what evil luck it should so come to pass, that thieves nevertheless were in every place so rife and so rank. [2]

“Nay, Sir, quod I (for I durst boldly speak my mind before the Cardinal) marvel nothing hereat; for this punishment of thieves passeth the limits of justice, and is also very hurtful to the public weal. For it is too extreme and cruel a punishment for theft, and yet not sufficient to refrain and withhold men from theft. For simple theft is not so great an offense, that it ought to be punished with death. Neither is there any punishment so horrible, that it can keep them from stealing, which have no other craft whereby to get their living. Therefore in this point, not you only, but also the most part of the world, be like evil schoolmasters, which be readier to beat, than to teach their scholars. For great and horrible punishments be appointed for thieves, whereas much rather provision should have been made, that there were some means, whereby they might get their living, so that no man should be driven to this extreme necessity, first to steal, and then to die.

“Yes (quod he) this matter is well enough provided for already. There be handicrafts, there is husbandry to get their living by, if they would not willingly be nought. Nay, quod I, you shall not scape so; for first of all, I will speak nothing of them that come home out of the wars, maimed and lame, as not long ago, out of Blackheath field, and a little before that, out of the wars in France; such, I say, as put their lives in jeopardy for public weal’s or the king’s sake, and by reason of weakness or lameness be not able to occupy their old crafts, and be too aged to learn new; of them I will speak nothing, forasmuch as wars have their ordinary recourse. But let us consider those things that chance daily before our eyes. First there is a great number of gentlemen, which can not be content to live idle themselves, like drones, of that which others have labored for; their tenants, I mean, whom they poll and shave to the quick, by raising their rents (for this only point of frugality do they use, men else through their lavish and prodigal spending, able to bring themselves to very beggary) these gentlemen, I say, do not only live in idleness themselves, but also carry about with them at their tails a great flock or train of idle and loitering serving men, which never learn any craft whereby to get their livings. These men as soon as their master is dead, or be sick themselves, be incontinent thrust out of doors. For gentlemen had rather keep idle persons, than sick men, and many times the dead man’s heir is not able to maintain so great a house, and keep so many serving men as his father did. Then in the mean season they that be thus destitute of service, either starve for hunger, or manfully play the thieves. For what would you have them do? [3]When they have wandered abroad so long, until they have worn threadbare their apparel, and also impaired their health, then gentlemen because of their pale and sickly faces, and patched coats, will not take them into service. And husbandmen dare not set them a work, knowing well enough that he is nothing meet to do true and faithful service to a poor man with a spade and a mattock for small wages and hard fare, which being daintily and tenderly pampered up in idleness and pleasure, was wont with a sword and buckler by his side to jet through the street with a bragging look, and to think himself to be as good as any man’s mate.

“Nay, by Saint Mary, sir (quod the lawyer), not so. For this kind of man must we make the most of. For in them as men of stouter stomachs, bolder spirits, and manlier courages than handicrafts men and plowmen be, doth consist the whole power, strength, and puissance of our army, when we must fight in battle. Forsooth, sir, as well you might say (quod I) that for war’s sake we must cherish thieves. For surely you shall never lack thieves while you have them. No, nor thieves be not the most false and faint-hearted soldiers, nor soldiers be not the cowardliest thieves; so well these two crafts agree together. But this fault, though it be much used among you, yet is not peculiar to you only, but common also almost to all nations. Yet France besides this is troubled and infected with a much sorer plague. The whole realm is filled and besieged with hired soldiers in peace time (if that be peace) which be brought in under the same color and pretense, that hath persuaded you to keep these idle serving men. For these wise fools and very archdolts thought the wealth of the country herein to consist, if there were ever in readiness a strong and sure garrison, specially of old practised soldiers, for they put no trust at all in men unexercised. And therefore they must be forced to seek for war, to the end that they may have practised soldiers and cunning manslayers, lest that (as it is prettily said by Sallust) their hands and their minds through idleness and lack of exercise, should wax dull. But how pernicious and pestilent a thing it is to maintain such beasts, the Frenchmen by their own harms have learned, and the examples of the Romans, Carthaginians, Syrians, and of many other countries do manifestly declare. For not only the empire, but also the fields and cities of all these, by divers occasions have been overrunned and destroyed by their own armies beforehand had in a readiness. Now how unnecessary a thing this is, hereby it may appear, that the French soldiers, which from their youth have been practised and inured in feats of arms, do [4]not crack nor advance themselves to have very often gotten the upper hand and mastery of your new made and unpractised soldiers. But in this point I will not use many words, lest perchance I may seem to flatter you.

“No, nor those same handicraftmen of yours in cities, nor yet the rude and uplandish plowmen of the country, are not supposed to be greatly afraid of your gentlemen’s idle serving men, unless it be such as be not of body or stature correspondent to their strength and courage, or else whose bold stomachs be discouraged through poverty. Thus you may see, that it is not to be feared lest they should be effeminated, if they were brought up in good crafts and laborsome works, whereby to get their livings, whose stout and sturdy bodies (for gentlemen vouchsafe to corrupt and spill none but picked and chosen men) now either by reason of rest and idleness be brought to weakness or else by easy and womanly exercises be made feeble and unable to endure hardness. Truly howsoever the case standeth, this methinketh is nothing available to the public weal, for war’s sake, which you never have, but when you will yourselves, to keep and maintain an innumerable flock of that sort of men, that be so troublesome and noyous in peace, whereof you ought to have a thousand times more regard than of war.

“But yet this is not the only necessary cause of stealing. There is another, which, as I suppose, is proper and peculiar to you Englishmen alone. What is that? quod the Cardinal. Forsooth my Lord (quod I) your sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now as I hear say, be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up, and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities. For look in what parts of the realm doth grow the finest and therefore dearest wool, there noblemen and gentlemen, yea and certain abbots, holy men no doubt, not contenting themselves with the yearly revenues and profits, that were wont to grow to their forefathers and predecessors of their lands, nor being content that they live in rest and pleasure nothing profiting, yea much noying the public weal, leave no ground for tillage, they inclose all into pastures; they throw down houses; they pluck down towns, and leave nothing standing, but only the church to be made a sheephouse. And as though you lost no land by forests, chases, lands, and parks, those good holy men turn all dwelling places and all glebeland into desolation and wilderness. Therefore that one covetous and unsatiable cormorant and very plague of his native country may compass about [5]and enclose many thousand acres of ground together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust out of their own, or else either by fraud, or by violent oppression they be put besides it, or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied, that they be compelled to sell all. By one means therefore or by other, either by hook or crook they must needs depart away, poor, silly, wretched souls, men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woeful mothers, with their young babes, and their whole household small in substance and much in number, as husbandry requireth many hands. Away they trudge, I say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to rest in. All their household stuff, which is very little worth, though it might well abide the sale; yet being suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to sell it for a thing of nought. And when they have wandered abroad till that be spent, what can they do but steal and then justly pardy be hanged, or else go about begging. Yet then they also be cast into prison as vagabonds, because they go about and work not, whom no man will set to work, though they never so willingly profer themselves thereto. For one shepherd or herdman is enough to eat up that ground with cattle, to the occupying whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite.

“And this is also the cause why victuals be now in many places dearer. Yea, besides this the price of wool is so risen, that poor folks which were wont to work it, and make cloth thereof, be now able to buy none at all. And by this means very many be forced to forsake work, and to give themselves to idleness. For after that so much ground was inclosed for pasture, an infinite multitude of sheep died of the rot, such vengeance God took of their inordinate and insatiable covetousness, sending among the sheep that pestiferous murrain, which much more justly should have fallen of the sheep-masters’ own heads. And though the number of sheep increase never so fast, yet the price falleth not one mite, because there be so few sellers. For they be almost all comen into a few rich men’s hands, whom no need forceth to sell before they lust, and they lust not before they may sell as dear as they lust.

“Now the same cause bringeth in like dearth of the other kinds of cattle, yea and that so much the more, because that after the farms plucked down and husbandry decayed, there is no man that careth about the breeding of young stock. For these rich men bring not up the young ones of great cattle as they do lambs. But first they buy them abroad very cheap and afterward, when they be fatted in their pastures, they sell them again exceeding dear. And [6]therefore (as I suppose) the whole incommodity hereof is not yet felt. For yet they make dearth only in those places where they sell. But when they fetch them away from thence where they be bred faster than they can be brought up; then shall there also be felt great dearth, stock beginning there to fail where the ware is bought. Thus the unreasonable covetousness of a few hath turned that thing to the utter undoing of your island, in the which thing the chief felicity of your realm did consist. For this great dearth of victuals causeth men to keep as little houses and as small hospitality as they possibly may, and to put away their servants, whither, I pray you, but abegging or else (which these gentle bloods and stout stomachs will sooner set their minds unto) astealing?

“Now to amend the matter, to this wretched beggary and miserable poverty is joined great wantonness, importunate superfluity and excessive riot. For not only gentlemen’s servants, but also handicraftman, yea and almost the plowmen of the country, with all other sorts of people, use much strange and proud newfangledness in their apparel, and too much prodigal riot and sumptuous fare at their table. Now bawds, queans, whores, harlots, strumpets, brothel-houses, stews, and yet another stews, winetaverns, alehouses and tippling houses, with so many naughty, lewd, and unlawful games, as dice, cards, tables, tennis, bowls, quoits, do not all these send the haunters of them straight astealing when their money is gone?

“Cast out these pernicious abominations, make a law that they, which plucked down farms and towns of husbandry, shall reëdify them, or else yield and uprender the possession thereof to such as will go to the cost of building them anew. Suffer not these rich men to buy up all, to engross and forestall, and with their monopoly to keep the market alone as please them. Let not so many be brought up in idleness, let husbandry and tillage be restored, let clothworking be renewed, that there may be honest labors for this idle sort to pass their time profitably, which hitherto either poverty has caused to be thieves, or else now to be vagabonds, or idle serving men, and shortly will be thieves. Doubtless unless you find a remedy for these enormities, you shall in vain advance yourselves of executing justice upon felons. For this justice is more beautiful in appearance, and more flourishing to the show, than either just or profitable. For by suffering your youth wantonly and viciously to be brought up, and to be infected, even from their tender age, by little and little with vice, then in God’s name to be punished, when they commit the same faults after being come to man’s state, which from their youth [7]they were ever like to do; in this point, I pray you, what other thing do you, than make thieves and then punish them?”2

In speaking of the faults which cling to society Meslier, among other things, says the following about crime:

“Another abuse, and one that is almost universally accepted and authorized in the world, is the appropriation of the wealth of the soil by individuals, in place of which all ought to possess it equally in common and enjoy it equally in common. I mean all those of the same district or territory, so that they as well as those who inhabit the same city, town, village, or parish should compose but one great family. They should all regard themselves as being brothers and sisters one to another and all children of the same fathers and mothers, who, for this reason ought to love one another as brothers and sisters and, in consequence, live peaceably together, having all things common. All should have the same or similar food, should be equally well lodged, clothed and shod, but should also apply themselves equally to their business, that is to say, to work or to some other honest and useful employment, each following his or her profession, or whatever is most necessary and fitting to be done according to the time or season or the things especially needed. And all this should be done, not under the direction of those who would like to dominate over others tyrannically and imperiously, but only under the direction of the wisest and best intentioned, for the maintenance and advancement of the public weal. All cities and other communities should also on their own account take great pains to make alliances with their neighbors and keep inviolable the peace and union between them, in order to aid and succor one another in time of need; for without this the public well-being cannot be maintained, and the greater part of mankind must be wretched and unhappy.

“For first, what results from this individual appropriation of the wealth of the soil for each to enjoy it severally apart from the others, as it seems good to him? It results that each is eager to get as much as he can, in all sorts of ways, good and bad. For cupidity, which is insatiable and, as we know, the root of all evils, looking through an open door, so to speak, toward the accomplishment of its desires, does not fail to take advantage of the opportunity, and makes all [8]men do whatever they can in order to have an abundance of goods and riches, and to be so protected from indigence as to have the pleasure and contentment of enjoying whatever they wish. From this it happens that those who are the strongest, the most crafty, the most skilful, and often even the most wicked and unworthy, have the largest share in the wealth of the soil and are best provided with all the good things of life.”4

“This is not all, but it also results from this abuse of which I have been speaking, namely that wealth is so badly distributed among men, some having everything, or at least much more than their true share, and others having nothing, or lacking a part of what is useful and necessary … it results from this, I say, that hatred and envy first of all arise. From these spring in turn murmurings, complainings, commotions, insurrections, and wars, which cause an infinity of evils among men. From these again proceed thousands and millions of mischievous lawsuits which the private owners are obliged to have among themselves to defend their property and to maintain what they consider their rights. These suits cause thousands of pains to the body, and tens of thousands of disquietudes to the mind, and often enough cause the entire ruin of both parties. From this it also happens that those who have nothing, or who have not all that they need, are constrained and obliged to employ evil means to get subsistence. From this come the frauds, deceptions, rascalities, injustices, extortions, robberies, thefts, murders, assassinations, and brigandages which cause such an infinity of evils among men.”5

I believe that the following observation, which I find in the “Discourse upon the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men”, is worth quoting.

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, and murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared if some one had torn up the stakes, or filled the ditch, and cried to his comrades: ‘Beware of heeding this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the ground belong to all, and the ground itself to no one.’ ”6 [9]

In his “Code de la nature” this author seeks to show that the harmony in which men lived in primitive society (when common property existed) has been destroyed by the institution of private property, which, coming in little by little, has changed common interests into contrary interests. He expresses himself on this point as follows:

“Every division of goods, whether equal or unequal, and all individual appropriation of the portions so formed are what Horace calls ‘Summi materiam mali.’ All political or moral phenomena are the effects of this pernicious cause. It is by this that we can explain all theorems and problems with regard to the origin, development, connection, and affinity of virtues or vices, disorders, and crimes; also with regard to the true motives of good or bad actions, the determinations and perplexities of the human will, the depravity of the passions, the inefficacy of precepts and laws to restrain them; and, finally, with regard to the monstrous creations resulting from the aberrations of the mind and the heart. The reason, I say, for all these things can be ascribed to the general obstinacy of legislators about breaking or letting any one else break the cord with which sociability was first bound by those who usurped to their own use soil that ought to belong indivisibly to all humanity.”7

Farther along he defines the same idea more exactly when he says: “Take away property, I repeat without ceasing, and you destroy forever a thousand factors which lead men to desperate extremities. I say that, delivered from this tyrant, it is totally impossible that man should give himself to crimes, that he should be a thief, an assassin, or a conqueror. The laws which authorize property punish him, it is true, for these crimes. Even his own remorse and fears, sprung from the prejudices of the moral system in which he has been raised, punish him still more. But the most severe chastisement of the offender is the primitive and innate feeling of benevolence. This inner voice of Nature, though commonly confined to the indifferent admonition not to injure, has still force enough to make the criminal feel keenly.”8 [10]

The following passage taken from the introduction to Beccaria’s “Des délits et des peines” is not without importance for our subject:

“The advantages of society ought to be equally divided among all its members. However, when men are gathered together we note a constant tendency to collect privileges, power, and happiness in the hands of a small minority, and to leave for the multitude only poverty and weakness. It is only by good laws that this tendency can be checked. But ordinarily men leave the regulation of the most important matters to temporary laws and to the caution of the moment, or even entrust them to the discretion of those whose interests are opposed to the best institutions and the wisest laws.”9

“If we turn to history we shall see that laws, which ought to be agreements freely made between free men, have oftenest been only the instrument of the passions of the minority or the result of the chance of the moment, never the work of a wise observer of human nature who has known how to direct all the actions of the multitude to this single end: The greatest good of the greatest number.”10

In Section 35 (“On Theft”) we read, among other things, as follows:

“A theft committed without violence ought to be punished merely by a fine. It is just that he who takes the property of another should be deprived of his own. But if theft is ordinarily the crime of poverty and despair, if this offense is committed only by that class of unfortunate men to whom the right of property (a terrible right and perhaps not a necessary one) has left no possession but mere existence, the imposition of a fine will contribute only to multiply thefts, by increasing the number of the indigent, and robbing an innocent family of bread to give it to a rich man who is perhaps himself a criminal.”11

In his “Théorie des lois civiles”, directed principally against Montesquieu’s “L’esprit des lois”, in which Linguet seeks to defend the thesis, “The spirit of the laws is Property”, there are some interesting [11]passages. After having shown that private property has been founded upon violence, he treats of the origin of the laws and, at the same time, of the causes of crime, and says:

“Among men all equal, all robust, passionate, sanguinary, and accustomed to arms, dangerous disputes would continually arise. It would be impossible but that chance and intelligence should produce great inequality of fortune. He who believed that he had been injured would wish to get justice for himself. The association formed to secure the booty would be troubled by the difficulty of enjoying it. These inconveniences occurred to the clearest thinkers and they sought to find a remedy. It was a totally new art that they created. But as it is almost always science that misleads, and as truth is never so easy to discover as at a distance from the Doctors, they looked about to see what route they should take.

“They thought that a primary act of violence was incontestably necessary. They could not disavow it, since it was the sole basis of their rights. But they also saw that it was necessary to prevent any further violence, since this would fall upon themselves. They conceived that the primitive usurpation ought to be regarded as a sacred title; but they perceived no less clearly that it was necessary to proscribe any new usurpation, which would contradict the ancient one and destroy it. In order to succeed in this they proposed to authorize only those brigandages which were carried on in common, and to punish severely those persons who dared to commit individual acts of spoliation. In response to their suggestions it was decreed that society should have the right to take everything, but that the members of society, as individuals, should be deprived of this right. They agreed that each should have peaceful possession of the part allotted to him, and that whoever tried to take it from him should be declared a public enemy and prosecuted as such.

“Here, then, in a few words is the source of all human laws. From it spring laws of every kind except the divine law, the source of which is as pure as its author. Upon this basis are founded all imaginable constitutions. This it is which sanctions the law of nations and the civil law, of which the one legitimates conquests, and the other proscribes robbery, only punishing, however, the thefts not committed by a large company. Finally this same principle has directed the steps of all politicians and of all founders of governments and empires.

“They have come by different ways, the details of which it is useless to discuss here, to change the original social anarchy, in which these principles were discovered, into administrations more or less [12]imperfect. Violence thus formed the foundation of their rights, but all wished to keep with justice what they got possession of very unjustly. They took precautions to prevent those who assisted them in their wholesale conquest from imitating them in detail. After making sure of the general domain they did not wish any one to be able to dispute the particular distribution of it. They confirmed by regulations all their accomplices in the possession of what they had had the address or the good fortune to seize. They decreed that any one who, seeing these possessions stolen by force, should attempt to secure restitution by the same method, should be punished as guilty of an offense against society.”12

In the chapter “Good and Evils which Laws Produce” Linguet pronounces the following trenchant and satirical judgment:

“The aim [of justice and law], as we have said, is to give society a fixed position. There results from them an invariable order which keeps each member in his place. It is by their means that the multitude who do not know them, even while they respect them, submit without repugnance to the small number who are armed by them. In this sense there is nothing so admirable as the law. It is the most sublime invention that ever presented itself to the human mind. It offers to any reflective individual the most satisfying, the most beautiful of spectacles. To restrain force and violence by pacific means; to subjugate the liveliest passions; to assure to painful virtues the preference over easy and delusive vices; to direct the eyes, the hands, and the hearts of men; to subdue them without preventing them from believing themselves free; to prescribe duties capable of securing the repose of docile souls who performed them, and of protecting them against rebellious spirits, who wish to be exempt from them; all this the laws do or ought to do. It would be difficult to join together so much greatness with so many benefits.

“But as the theory of the laws is honorable to the humanity which has been able to grasp it, so the practical application of the laws has been most distressing, when, after the observance of them has been recommended, it is necessary to pass on to the punishments decreed for the offenses which violate them. The passions which self-interest unceasingly incites often necessitate this grievous extremity. Then we see men authorized by general consent to exercise an inflexible rigor upon their fellows. We hear justice pronounce sentences which would pass for cruel if they were not indispensable. It makes use of prisons, executioners, gallows. Liberty and even life become pledges [13]of which justice deprives men at pleasure when they abuse them. To make good the losses which the state suffers from the crimes that disturb it, it comes back upon the criminals, and consequently suffers almost equally from the crime and from the punishment.”13

In the third section of his “Système social”, under the heading, “The Influence of Government upon Morals”, Holbach, in treating of the causes of crime says among other things:

“In China they punish the mandarin in the department in which a great crime has been committed. A bad government has its own negligence or its own injustice to blame for the great number of malefactors who are found in a state. The multiplicity of criminals proclaims an administration as tyrannical and careless. The severity of taxes, the vexations and hardships inflicted by the rich and great multiply the number of the unfortunate, whom poverty often reduces to despair and who avail themselves of crime as the promptest means of escape from their condition. If wealth is the mother of vices, poverty is the mother of crimes. When a state is badly governed and wealth is too unequally divided, so that millions of men lack the necessaries of life, while a small number of citizens are surfeited with luxuries, there we commonly see a great number of criminals, whose number punishments do not diminish. If a government punishes the unfortunate it leaves undisturbed the vices that are leading the state to its ruin; it erects gibbets for the poor, whereas by bringing men to poverty it has itself made thieves, assassins, and criminals of every kind; it punishes crime, while it continually invites men to commit crime.”14

“The man who has no share in the wealth of the state is not held to society by any bond. How can we expect a crowd of unfortunates to whom we have given neither principles nor morals to remain quiet spectators of the abundance, the luxury, the unjustly acquired riches of so many corrupt individuals, who seem to insult the general poverty, and are only rarely disposed to relieve it? By what right can society punish the thieving servant who has been a witness of the unpunished robberies and extortions of his master, or has seen public thieves strutting along, enjoying the consideration of their [14]fellow citizens, and shamelessly displaying the fruits of their extortions under the very eyes of the heads of the state? How can we make the poor respect the property of others when they themselves have been the victims of the rapacity of the rich, or have seen the property of their fellow citizens snatched away by violence or fraud with impunity? Finally how can we successfully preach submission to men to whom everything proves that the laws, armed against themselves alone, are indulgent toward the great and happy, and are inexorable only for the unhappy and poor? ‘A man dies but once’ and the imagination of the criminal familiarizes itself little by little with the idea of the most cruel punishments. He ends by regarding them as a ‘mauvais quart d’heure’, and would as soon perish by the hand of the executioner as die of hunger, or even work all his life without reward.”15

This author’s opinion of crime is best expressed by the following quotation taken from his “De la législation ou principes des lois”:

“The more I reflect upon it the more I am convinced that inequality of fortune and condition disorders man and alters the natural sentiments of his heart, for the habit of luxury gives him a desire for things that are useless for his true happiness and fills his mind with the most unjust and absurd prejudices and errors. I believe that equality, while satisfying modest requirements, keeps those requirements modest, and preserves in the soul a peace which is opposed to the birth and progress of the passions. By what strange folly should we have cultivated a studied elegance and refinement in our needs if inequality of fortune had not accustomed us to regard this ridiculous fastidiousness as a proof of superiority, and attained thereby a certain consideration? Why should I consider as below me a man who is perhaps my superior in merit; why should I pretend to have authority over him and so open the door to tyranny, to servitude, and all the vices most fatal to society, if the inequality of conditions had not exposed my soul to ambition, as the inequality of fortune has exposed it to avarice? It is inequality alone that has taught men to prefer many useless and harmful things to virtue. I believe that it has been demonstrated that in a state of equality nothing would be easier than to prevent abuses and maintain the law. [15]Equality is certain to produce all good, because it unites men, elevates their souls, and prepares them for mutual feelings of benevolence and amity. Inequality, on the other hand, produces all evil, because it degrades men, humiliates them, and sows division and hatred among them.”16

In his “Théorie des loix criminelles” we find among others the following passages that are of interest in connection with the subject which occupies our attention:

“A man is not born an enemy to society. It is circumstances which give him that title, such as poverty or misfortune. He does not disturb the general tranquillity until he has lost his own. He ceases to be a good citizen only when the name becomes meaningless in his case; and it is when poverty has destroyed his own privileges that he dares to attack those of his fellows. To make all citizens happy is, then, to prevent the inception of crime; and the rarity of crime is in direct ratio to the goodness of the administration. This simple principle, however unknown to administrators even to the present day, is no less solid on that account, no less luminous, and ought no less to serve as the basis for government. If it has been neglected, it is because it has appeared easier to rulers to punish the unfortunate being who demands the rights that nature gave him, than to satisfy his just demand; to stifle the cries of anguish, than to change them to shouts of applause. The penal code of every nation is much like the bull of Phalaris; its imposing garb of juridical forms, like the timbrels and other instruments surrounding the brazen monster, prevent the cries of the victims from reaching the ear. Tyrants cry out to the credulous spectators that blood is necessary to the public safety; good legislators are greedy of it.

“The first and most efficacious means of preventing crimes consists, then, in a wise administration that procures the general happiness. When the rays of the beneficent star that rules extend their influence even to the lowest ranks of society, they are rarely sullied by punishments; each, concentrating itself upon the spot where heaven has thrown it, makes the day that it lightens joyous and blessed (and crime is so near to the man who is forced to curse his fate!). If the taxes are light and not severely felt, if subsistence is [16]easy, the number of marriages increases, they are happy, and the population multiplies. The people then do not regret their labors, since they are interspersed with pleasures. They are attached to the fatherland, which offers them good fortune, and to life, which gives them the means of enjoying it. A man does not disturb the public peace, because his own prosperity is the fruit of it. A property-holder himself, he takes good care not to do any violence to the right of property, and even where he would not naturally have a horror of bloodshed, his days are too precious to him for him to dare to cut short those of his fellow-citizens.”17

“… What sovereign, I say, cannot easily see that he has in his hand the true means of restraining crime, namely to secure the public well-being by means of civil legislation. Yes, the more perfect civil legislation becomes the less need there will be for criminal legislation. And this need will disappear entirely when the twofold basis upon which civil legislation ought to rest becomes fixed and invariable; when the property and the liberty of subjects are respected by the monarch; when the unfortunate man who has been born without property (though with the same needs as others) can, by working, correct the injustice of fate, and destroy the inequality of the distribution of wealth; when, finally, the fruit of his labor will not be the prey of the greedy tax-gatherer. The rich man can then enjoy his wealth in safety, because despair will no longer expose him to the knife of the poor man whom his proud opulence insults. We posit here as the foundation of good legislation the security of real and personal property, but a masterpiece of statesmanship would be, to make them useless, if it were possible, by abolishing them altogether. This would be to tear up crime by the roots. It was thus that Lycurgus, whose laws have been so calumniated because to narrow minds they seemed impossible of imitation, cleverly dried up the source of all crime. To avoid attacks upon property he abolished it; to prevent adultery he had all women held in common; to make the Spartan a hero he made him the slave of his harsh legislation; finally to prevent the sad effects of the passions he permitted none but the passion for the public weal. This is why crimes were so rare in Sparta as long as these laws were faithfully observed. But when Lysander brought back from the fatal conquest of Athens treasures, the taste for art and the rage for luxury, all the vices were rapidly introduced. Then crimes broke out; ambition made men commit perjuries, assassinations, treasons; then the virtuous Agis, who wanted to revive [17]morality, perished under the perfidious knife of the royal servitude; then men like Nabis and Machanidas appeared; and finally a penal code was introduced, and Sparta was reduced to the status of an ordinary city.”18

“Ought we to be astonished that the attacks upon the social laws are so multiplied to-day, and that there are always so many thieves and assassins, when to the causes of crime which we have developed it is necessary to add that horrible malady of European states, mendicity? When the water destined by nature to quench the thirst of all men is artificially diverted into particular channels for the exclusive use of certain individuals, the unfortunate man, tormented by need, falls into despair, and in a rage breaks these fatal channels, making the fragments fall upon the heads of his enemies. Exclusive possession of property has everywhere produced poverty in the most numerous class, and poverty has given birth to mendicity, which, robbing with one hand to satisfy hunger, with the other plunges a dagger into the bosom of the rich to stop their cries. Here we have in two words the origin of theft and murder. To destroy the roots of these it would be necessary to restore among men the equality of condition so praised by modern philosophers, but not at all included in the programs of modern governments. It would be necessary to distribute wealth equally among all citizens, to eradicate from their hearts the corrosive desire of ambition, and to blunt the spur of their personal interest.”19

In his “Recherches philosophiques sur la propriété et sur le vol” Brissot gives an exposition of natural property, and of property as established by society. He says of crime: “Civil property is very different from natural property, as we have shown. It is not based upon the same title, and has not the same aim or the same bounds. Need is the limit of natural property. Civil property goes further and includes superfluities. In nature each man has a right to everything; in society the man to whom his parents have left no property has a right to nothing. In nature he would be guilty if he did not satisfy his needs; he is guilty in society when he satisfies them if he has no property. Society has, then, upset all the ideas of property given by nature. It has destroyed the equilibrium between human beings which nature established. Equality banished there appear the odious distinctions of rich and poor. Society has been divided into two classes, the first consisting of citizens with property, living in idleness; the second and more numerous class composed of the [18]mass of the people, to whom the right to exist has been sold dear, and who are degraded and condemned to perpetual toil. To confirm this new right of property the most cruel punishments have been pronounced upon all those who disturb or attack it. The breach of this right is called theft; and see how far we are from nature! The thief in the state of nature is the rich man, the man who has a superfluity; in society the thief is he who robs this rich man. What a complete transposition of ideas!”20

“If man retains, even in society, the inalienable right of property which nature has given him, nothing can take it from him, nothing can prevent his exercising it. If the other members of society concentrate in their own persons the possession of all the soil; if those who are robbed by this spoliation and forced to have recourse to labor cannot by this means secure their whole subsistence, then they have the right to exact from the others, who hold property, the means of satisfying their needs. They have a claim upon the wealth of others in proportion to their own necessity, and force used to resist this claim is violence. The rich man is the only thief; he alone ought to hang from those infamous gallows which are raised only to punish the man born in poverty for being needy; only to force him to stifle the voice of nature, the cry of liberty; only to compel him to subject himself to a harsh servitude in order to avoid an ignominious death.”21

In the third chapter of the First Book of his “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice”, Godwin treats of two important kinds of crime, theft and fraud.

Of these he says: “Two of the greatest abuses relative to the interior policy of nations which at this time prevail in the world, consist in the irregular transfer of property, either first by violence, or secondly by fraud. If among the inhabitants of a country there existed no desire in one individual to possess himself of the substance of another, or no desire so vehement and restless as to prompt him to acquire it by means inconsistent with order and justice, undoubtedly in that country guilt could scarcely be known but by report. If every man could with perfect facility obtain the necessities of life, and, obtaining them, feel no uneasy craving after its superfluities, [19]temptation would lose its power. Private interest would visibly accord with public good; and civil society become what poetry has feigned of the golden age. Let us inquire into the principles to which these evils are indebted for their existence.”22

According to him these crimes are the consequence:

First, Of poverty, which has reached enormous dimensions (in England one person out of every seven has at some time received public aid). The situation has become such that for the poor man the state of society is a state of war. He considers society not as a body whose object is to maintain personal rights and to procure to each individual the means of providing for his own support, but as a body that protects the advantageous position of one class of persons, while holding others in a state of poverty and dependence.

Second, Of the ostentation of the rich, who make the poor man feel all the more what he is deprived of.

Third, Of the tyranny of the rich, made permanent by legislation, by the administration of the laws, and by the distribution of wealth.

In his Eighth Book (“Of Property”), Godwin elaborates the ideas given above. Speaking of the moral improvement that would result from the abolition of private property, he says: “And here it is obvious that the great occasions for crime would be cut off forever. All men love justice. All men are conscious that man is a being of one common nature, and feel the propriety of the treatment they receive from one another being measured by one common standard. Every man is desirous of assisting another; whether we should choose to ascribe this to an instinct implanted in his nature which renders this a source of personal gratification, or to his perception of the reasonableness of such assistance. So necessary a part is this of the constitution of mind, that it may be doubted whether any man perpetrates any action, however criminal, without having first invented some sophistry, some palliation, by which he proves to himself that it is best to be done. Hence it appears, that offense, the invasion by one man upon the security of another, is a thought alien to the human mind, and which nothing could have reconciled us to but the sharp sting of necessity. To consider merely the present order of society, it is evident that the first offense must have been his who began a monopoly, and took advantage of the weakness of his neighbors to secure certain exclusive privileges to himself. The man on the other hand who determined to put an end to this monopoly, and who peremptorily demanded what was superfluous to the [20]possessor and would be of extreme benefit to himself, appeared to his own mind to be merely avenging the offended laws of justice. Were it not for the plausibleness of this apology, it is to be presumed that there would be no such thing as crime in the world.

“The fruitful source of crimes consists in this circumstance, one man’s possessing in abundance that of which another man is destitute. We must change the nature of mind before we can prevent it from being powerfully influenced by this circumstance, when brought strongly home to its perceptions by the nature of its situation. Man must cease to have senses, the pleasures of appetite and vanity must cease to gratify, before he can look on tamely at the monopoly of these pleasures. He must cease to have a sense of justice before he can clearly and fully approve this mixed scene of superfluity and want. It is true that the proper method of curing this inequality is by reason and not by violence. But the immediate tendency of the established administration is to persuade that reason is impotent. The injustice of which they complain is upheld by force, and they are too easily induced, by force to attempt its correction. All they endeavor is the partial correction of an injustice, which education tells them is necessary, but more powerful reason affirms to be tyrannical.

“Force grew out of monopoly. It might accidentally have occurred among savages whose appetites exceeded their supply, or whose passions were inflamed by the presence of the object of their desire; but it would gradually have died away, as reason and civilization advanced. Accumulated property has fixed its empire; and henceforth all is an open contention of the strength and cunning of the one party against the strength and cunning of the other. In this case the violent and premature struggles of the necessitous are undoubtedly an evil. They tend to defeat the very cause in the success of which they are most deeply interested; they tend to procrastinate the triumph of truth. But the true crime in every instance is in the selfish and partial propensities of men, thinking only of themselves, and despising the emolument of others; and of these the rich have their share.

“The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, these are the ultimate growth of the established administration of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual and moral improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of [21]nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man would be obliged to guard his little store, or provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would be an enemy to his neighbor, for they would have no subject of contention; and of consequence philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her; mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. Each would assist the inquiries of all.”23

The author in several works has given us his ideas upon the relation between crime and the social environment, and especially economic conditions. It is in “The Book of the New Moral World”, which appeared in 1844, that his views are best expressed.25

They may be summed up as follows: It is not the man himself, it is his circumstances that form his character; an unfavorable environment produces a bad man, a favorable one a good man. The organization of the society of today is such that it awakens in a man all evil qualities. The greater part of mankind live in conditions of the greatest poverty, and become physically, intellectually, and morally inferior. The working classes are housed in unsanitary dwellings, work too hard and too long, and are insufficiently clothed and nourished.

Improper production and distribution of wealth are the causes of the prevalence of disorder and anarchy. The means of production, the raw materials and the productive forces, are sufficient to provide [22]amply for the needs of all. But competition by devouring wealth prevents this, and brings it about that while some have a superfluity, the majority have not even the necessaries of life (a fact which is one great cause of criminality). The process of distribution adds enormously to the waste because of the great number of intermediaries.

Education and instruction are neglected to the last degree. The children of the lower classes are almost entirely deprived of instruction, not to say education; their parents, never having been taught themselves, are incapable of imparting instruction, nor have they the leisure for it. However, the children of all classes are made egotistical and anti-social; they have impressed upon them the maxim “Each one for himself”, in place of being taught that the love of one’s neighbor is the principle upon which society ought to be based.

Owen finds the cause of crime, then, in the organization of society upon the basis of private property. The following is a characteristic passage from Volume VI, “General Constitution of Government and Universal Code of Law”:

“Private property has been, and is at this day, the cause of endless crime and misery to man, and he should hail the period when the progress of science, and the knowledge of the means to form a superior character for all the individuals of the human race, render its continuance not only unnecessary, but most injurious to all; injurious to an incalculable extent to the lower, middle, and upper classes. The possession of private property tends to make the possessor ignorantly selfish; and selfish, very generally, in proportion to the extent of the property held by its claimant.…

“Private property also deteriorates the character of its possessor in various ways; it is calculated to produce in him pride, vanity, injustice, and oppression, with a total disregard of the natural and inalienable rights of his fellow men. It limits his ideas within the little narrow circle of self, prevents the mind from expanding to receive the extended views beneficial for the human race, and understand great general interests that could be made most essentially to improve the character and condition of all.…

“Private property alienates mind from mind, is a perpetual cause of repulsive action throughout society, a never-failing source of deception and fraud between man and man, and a strong stimulus to prostitution among women. It has caused war throughout all the past ages of the world’s known history, and has been a stimulant to innumerable private murders.

“It is now the sole cause of poverty and its endless crimes and [23]miseries over the world, and in principle it is as unjust as it is unwise in practice.

“In a rational-made society it will never exist. Whatever may have been its necessity or utility, before the introduction of the supremacy of machinery and chemistry, it is now most unnecessary and an unmixed evil; for every one, from the highest to the lowest, may be ensured through life much more of all that is really beneficial for humanity, and the permanent happiness of the individual, through public scientific arrangements, than it is possible to obtain through the scramble and contest for procuring and maintaining private property.

“Private property also continually interferes with or obstructs public measures which would greatly benefit all, and frequently to merely please the whim or caprice of an ill-trained individual.…

“With a well arranged scientific system of public property, equal education and condition, there will be no mercenary or unequal marriages; no spoiled children; and none of the evils which proceed from these errors in the present system, if crudities which pervade all the departments of life, and are thoroughly inconsistent, can be called a system of society.

“In fact, as soon as individuals shall be educated and placed—and it is for the best and permanent interest of society that all should be educated and placed—the saving of time, labour, and capital, between public and private property, will be beyond any estimate the mind of man can form in favour of public property.…

“Therefore the twelfth law26 will be, that—

“ ‘Under the Rational System of society—after the children shall have been trained to acquire new habits and new feelings, derived from a knowledge of the laws of human nature—there shall be no useless private property.’

“The old system of the world has been created and governed on the assumed principle of man’s responsibility to man, and by man’s rewards and punishments.

“And this principle has been assumed upon the original supposition, that man was born with power to form himself into any character he liked; to believe or disbelieve whatever he pleased; and that he could love, hate, or be indifferent as to all persons and things, according to an independent will which enabled him to do as he liked in all these respects. [24]

“The present system is, therefore, essentially a system supported and governed by laws of punishment and reward of man’s creating, in opposition to nature’s laws of punishing and rewarding. The former system is artificial, and always produces crime and misery, continually increasing, and therefore requiring new laws to correct the evils necessarily forced upon society by the old laws; thus laws are multiplied without limit by man to counteract nature’s laws, and ever without success. While nature’s beautiful and benevolent laws, if consistently acted upon in a system made throughout in accordance with them, would produce knowledge, goodness, and happiness, continually increasing, to the human race.

“By man’s laws being forced upon the population of all countries, in continual opposition to nature’s laws; with law added to law, in the vain attempt to remedy endless previous laws, the world had been made and kept criminal, with crimes multiplying as human laws increased.

“The laws of man are made to support injustice, and give additional power to the oppressor and to the man devoid of truth and honesty over the innocent and just. And such must be the result, as long as human laws, lawyers, and law paraphernalia shall be sanctioned by society.…

“Nature’s laws carry with them the only just rewards and punishments that man should experience; and they are, in every case, efficient for nature’s purposes, and to ensure the happiness of man in all countries and climes; and, differing from man’s puny, short-sighted laws, they are always adequate to the end intended to be accomplished. And this end is evidently to increase human knowledge and happiness. It is through these laws of nature, that man has attained the knowledge which he has acquired. He has been continually urged onward to make discoveries, and to invent, through pain experienced, or pleasure enjoyed or anticipated.

“But man has been trained to have his character formed, and to be governed by laws of his own making; his habits, manners, ideas, and associations of ideas have emanated, directly or indirectly, from his artificial and injurious source; and, in consequence, the mind, language, and practice of all individuals have become a chaos of confusion. And this chaos in the character and conduct of individuals has made a yet greater chaos in all the proceedings of society: and, in consequence, man is now opposing man, and nation opposing nation, all over the earth. Yet all nature declares, that it shall be by union of man with man, and nation with nation, that the human [25]race can ever attain a high degree of permanent prosperity and happiness, or become rational.

“Nevertheless, while this irrational individual and general character shall remain, those men and women who have been made to receive this character, and to be so injured, must continue for a time to be governed by these most injurious laws. The laws of nature being alone applicable to a society, whose laws are in accordance with the laws of nature.

“When this rational society shall be formed, and men, individually and generally, shall be trained to act in accordance with it, then shall human punishments and rewards cease, and cease for ever.

“The thirteenth law will therefore be, that—

“ ‘As soon as the members of these scientific associations shall have been educated, from infancy, in a knowledge of the laws of their nature, trained to act in obedience to them, and surrounded by circumstances all in unison with them, there shall be no individual reward or punishment.’

“The Rational System of society is one and indivisible in its principles and practices; each part is essential to its formation. It is one unvarying consistent system for forming the character of all individuals, and for governing their affairs; and it is essentially a system to prevent evil, and render individual punishment and reward as unnecessary, as they are unjust and injurious to all.…

“Individual punishments and rewards, ignorance, the inferior feelings and passions, with all crimes and miseries, will go together when the irrational system shall be abolished. When the cause of evil shall be removed, then will the evil cease, and not before.”27

In the second part of his “Voyage en Icarie” the author treats of the relation between crime and economic conditions. In his opinion [26]money and inequality of fortune and of property are the causes of all crimes. The following quotation explains his views. (The work speaks of present day society as in the past, and supposes the existence of a state with common property.)

“Wealth and superfluity being, by their nature, as I have already said, injustice and usurpation, the poor often thought only of robbing the rich; and theft, under all its forms (swindling, pocket-picking, bankruptcy, breach of trust, fraud, cheating, etc.), was the almost universal occupation of the poor as well as of the rich. And the poor robbed not only the rich, they robbed even the poor themselves, so that all, rich and poor, were both robbers and robbed.

“It would be impossible to enumerate all the kinds of theft and classes of thieves. It was in vain that the rich had terrible laws made against theft; it was in vain that the prisons and galleys were kept filled with poor thieves, and that their blood was often poured out upon the scaffold. Buoyed up by the hope of not being discovered, the poor robbed in the fields, or in houses, or upon the highroads, or even in the streets at night. The skilful pick-pocket stole even in open day. The audacious swindler robbed by means of trickery and deceit, sometimes by selling things of no value, sometimes by taking advantage of credulity or even of beneficence.

“Shall I speak of the counterfeiters of every description? Shall I also speak of the usurers, the great thieves, the wolves of the bourse and the bank, the contractors and monopolists? Shall I speak of those who enriched themselves by means of public calamities, who desired or provoked invasions or wars in order to make their fortunes, and famines in order to amass money in the midst of corpses? Shall I speak of the thieves who risked the public health by adulterating the food and drink that they sold, and of those other great robbers, the heads of the army, who pillaged foreign peoples while exposing their own country to terrible reprisals? Finally shall I speak of the innumerable means of amassing money at the expense of others, and of the innumerable individuals in almost all classes who daily practiced them?

“Not all these acts were classed as thefts by the law. The most inexcusable, the most harmful, those which were only practiced by the rich, even enjoyed legal impunity. But all of them were, nevertheless, in reality according to the rules of a sound morality, thefts. Each class presented, without doubt, many exceptions. There were some rich men as honest as possible, and many workers and poor men were persons of probity; but it may be said that by force of circumstances, and as an irresistible consequence of the inequality of fortune, [27]all men, rich and poor, were generally induced to commit actions which were in reality only a kind of theft.

“And often theft led to all kinds of cruelty, to murder, and even to the most barbarous tortures in order to make owners reveal where they had hidden their gold. How many poisonings and parricides did the thirst for gold or inheritance excite! Thieves kidnapped children in order to prostitute them. They even stole and murdered young people in order to sell the flesh of their corpses!

“In a word, neither confidence nor security was possible. Each individual saw enemies in almost all the others; and society seemed, as it were, but a haunt of cut-throats in the midst of a forest! And all these horrors, which you will find more or less everywhere, were with us, and are still elsewhere—I cannot repeat it too often—the inevitable result of the unrestricted right of property.”28