[1] Desjardins, in the Introduction to his ``Cahiers des Etats
Generaux en 1789 et la Legislation Criminelle,'' Paris,
1883, gives a good description of the state of public opinion in
that age. He speaks also of the charges which were brought
against the advocates of the new doctrines concerning crime, that
they upset the moral and social order of things. Nowadays,
charges against the experimental school are cited from these same
advocates; for the revolutionary of yesterday is very often the
conservative of to-day.


This school had, and still has, a practical purpose, namely, to
diminish all punishments, and to abolish a certain number, by a
magnanimous reaction of humanity against the arbitrary harshness
of mediaeval times. It had also, and still has, a method of its
own, namely, to study crime from its first principles, as
an abstract entity dependent upon law.

Here and there since the time of Beccaria another stream of theory
has made itself manifest. Thus there is the correctional school,
which Roeder brought into special prominence not many years ago.
But though it flourished in Germany, less in Italy and France, and
somewhat more in Spain, it had no long existence as an independent
school, for it was only too easily confuted by the close sequence
of inexorable facts. Moreover, it could do no more than oppose a
few humanitarian arguments on the reformation of offenders to the
traditional arguments of the theories of jurisprudence, of
absolute and relative justice, of intimidation, utility, and the
like.