Hitherto, then, the classical school stands alone, with varying
shades of opinion, but one and distinct as a method, and as a body
of principles and consequences. And whilst it has achieved its
aim in the most recent penal codes, with a great, and too
frequently an excessive diminution of punishments, so in respect
of theory, in Italy, Germany, and France it has crowned its work
with a series of masterpieces amongst which I will only mention
Carrara's ``Programme of Criminal Law.'' As the author tells us
in one of his later editions, from the a priori principle
that ``crime is a fact dependent upon law, an infraction rather
than an action,'' he deduced--and that by the sheer force of an
admirable logic--a complete symmetrical scheme of legal and
abstract consequences, wherein judges are compelled, whether they
like it or not, to determine the position of every criminal who
comes before them.
But now the classical school, which sprang from the marvellous
little work of Beccaria, has completed its historic cycle. It has
yielded all it could, and writers of the present day who still
cling to it can only recast the old material. The youngest of
them, indeed, are condemned to a sort of Byzantine discussion of
scholastic formulas, and to a sterile process of scientific
rumination.
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