Beccaria and the two brothers
Pietro and
Alessandro Verri started an important cultural
reformist movement centered around their
journal ('The Coffee House'), which ran from the summer of 1764 for about two years, and was inspired by
Addison and
Steele's literary magazine
The Spectator and other such journals. represented an entirely new cultural moment in
Northern Italy. With their
Enlightenment rhetoric and their balance between topics of socio-political and literary interest, the anonymous contributors held the interest of the educated classes in Italy, introducing recent thought such as that of
Voltaire and
Denis Diderot.
On Crimes and Punishments marked the high point of the
Milan Enlightenment. In it, Beccaria put forth some of the first modern arguments against the
death penalty. It was also the first full work of
penology, advocating reform of the criminal law system. The book was the first full-scale work to tackle criminal reform and to suggest that criminal justice should conform to
rational principles. It is a less theoretical work than the writings of
Hugo Grotius,
Samuel von Pufendorf and other comparable thinkers, and as much a work of advocacy as of theory. In this essay, Beccaria reflected on the convictions of the
Il Caffè group, who sought to cause reform through Enlightenment discourse. In 1765,
André Morellet produced a French translation of
On Crimes and Punishments. His translation was widely criticized for the liberties he took with the text. Morellet believed that the Italian text of Beccaria required some clarification. He, therefore, omitted parts and sometimes added to them. However, he mainly changed the structure of the essay by moving, merging, or splitting chapters. These interventions were known to experts, but because Beccaria himself had indicated in a letter to Morellet that he fully agreed with him, it was assumed that these adaptations also had Beccaria's consent in substance. The differences are so great, however, that the book from the hands of Morellet became quite another book than the book that Beccaria wrote. == Principles ==