BECCARIA, Caesar Bonesana, Marquis of, author of the well-known treatise on Crimes and Punishments, was born at Milan in the year 1735. His early studies were carried on in the college of the Jesuits at Parma. He possessed a quick apprehension; but, being naturally taciturn, and inclined to reflection, he seldom communicated the progress of his ideas, and was with difficulty prevailed upon to complete his exercises. It is related, as another peculiarity of his disposition, that he never received praise from his teachers without betraying evident marks of pain and humiliation. These unusual indications of a susceptible mind, which, outstripping the course of his instructors, delighted in its own pursuits, and derived little complacency from a sense of its actual attainments, gave him, to common observers, a certain air of slowness, and even of stupidity, and characterized his features and deportment during the whole of his life. Having left college at the age of seventeen, he applied himself, with unremitting diligence, to the study of mathematics, and the philosophy of man.

His understanding appears to have been very early capable of embracing the most general views, and his breast to have been warmed by those benevolent wishes for the enlargement of human happiness, the sincerity and the strength of which are often so severely tried by the events and passions of maturer life. His propensity to the study of jurisprudence and political philosophy was first excited or confirmed by the Lettres Personnes of Montesquieu; a production capable, indeed, of alluring a less enthusiastic mind than that of Beccaria. But his industry in the pursuit of knowledge appears to have been chiefly stimulated by the patriotic and honourable desire of diffusing instruction among his countrymen, particularly the inhabitants of Milan, whom he represents, in one of his letters, as abandoned to a state of lamentable and universal ignorance. In the prosecution of these laudable designs, he fortunately possessed the confidence, and was encouraged by the protection, of Count Firmι-ani, then governor of that part of the Austrian dominions; —an accomplished nobleman, who, with comprehensive views of policy, concurred in every plan which was calculated for improving the state of the provinces, and the condition of their inhabitants.

Beccaria first appeared as an author in the year 1762, [7:4:503]when he published some observations on the Derangement of the Currency in the Milanese States, and a plan for its amendment. Soon after this he established a small literary society at Milan, in concert with some associates of character and sentiment similar to his own; among others, Alessandro and Pietro Verri, who at that time likewise contributed, by their talents and public spirit, to distinguish the reign of Maria Teresa in Lombardy.^[1. A small publication which appeared about that time, under the title of Thoughts on Happiness, was written by the former. His .terary pursuits were, soon after, suspended by his appointment to a public situation. ] Assisted by these friends, and countenanced by Firmiani, he commenced a periodical publication under the name of the Caffé; a plan said to have been suggested to them by the celebrity of Addison’s Spectator, and the general belief of its influence on the opinions and taste of the people of England. Various papers, contributed by the members of this society, on subjects of literature, ethics, and physical science, were published during the years 1764 and 1765.

But by far the most remarkable production to which this society gave rise, and that by which the reputation of Beccaria has been chiefly perpetuated among other nations, was the treatise on Crimes and Punishments (Dei Delitti e delle Pene). This essay is said to have been undertaken at the earnest solicitation of Count Alexander Verri, who then discharged the functions of Protector of Prisoners (Protettore de Carceratι) at the court of Milan. It was written at the house of his brother, Peter Verri, where the meetings of the society were held; and in concert with him the author, every evening, revised and corrected what he had written during the day. In this manner the work was completed within two months, and was printed in the course of the year 1764, with the mark of the Lucca press.^[2. These particulars, communicated in a letter of Count A. Verri to the Abbate Isidoro Bianchi, in 1802, are repeated by the latter in his Elogio on Pietro Verri. ]

In this small but noted work the author appears as the advocate of reason and sound policy no less than of humanity. It was his purpose, by examining the foundation, the objects, and consequently the boundaries, of penal law, to expose the inefficacy as well as injustice of many provisions in the judicial code of his own country, and in those of other European nations, which, derived from remote times, and established under a different order of society, had been perverted and debased during successive ages of barbarism. The authority of positive institutions formed almost the only basis of law, even in countries the furthest advanced in civilization; and that authority was in many of them drawn too servilely from the Roman system. Montesquieu had already thrown many penetrating glances at the foundation and structure of these ancient fabrics; but it was still reserved for others to scrutinize them more closely, and to draw forth, and present to general view, those direct inferences which that examination suggested. In no part were the existing codes more defective and vicious than in the department of the criminal law; and it was to this, accordingly, that Beccaria’s attention was exclusively directed. Nor does he offer the work as a general system or theory even of penal law, in which light it would be found every way imperfect, but only as an attempt to analyze parts of a system which he found actually existing. Among the most prominent of those points to which his reasoning is applied, are, the due proportion between crime and punishment, and the violations of that proportion, whether by unnecessary severity of punishments, or the want of a scale and distribution of them suited to the amount and danger of particular offences; the inconsistency of certain rules then established on the subject of legal evidence; secret accusations, fictitious crimes, the use of torture as an instrument for the discovery of truth; imprisonment not authorized by law, or of uncertain duration, and the sale of offices of justice; along with other vices in the constitution of the courts. In treating these various topics, he seldom deduces his argument from remote sources, or pursues it to subtile refinements. That some propositions are advanced in the course of the work which are of a questionable nature, cannot be denied; and there are particular illustrations which have an exclusive reference to certain forms of government then existing in the Italian states. But, in general, the author reasons on few and acknowledged principles, and makes his appeal to the universal feelings of mankind. As one of the most important conclusions which result from his reasoning, or rather as concentrating a number of these conclusions, he closes his book with the following proposition: “In order that a punishment may not be an act of violence of one, or of many, against an individual member of society, it is essential that it should be public, prompt, and necessary, the least possible in the given case, and determined by the law.”

FIis style in this work, with the exception of one or two passages, where he intentionally addresses himself only to the lesser number, is uniformly perspicuous, and, like that of all his other writings, though often eloquent, is unadorned. He employs, in some parts of it, that species of ridicule which, on a similar occasion, had been used with so great effect by Montesquieu. Thus, while treating the subject of torture, he proposes, among others, the following query in the form of a mathematical problem: “The force of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves of an innocent person being given, it is required to find the degree of pain necessary to make him confess himself guilty of a given crime ?” Peculiar traits of the writer’s dispositions and train of sentiment are likewise to be found in other passages. Thus having, in a later edition, under that part which relates to fraudulent bankruptcy, modified some sentiments which he had originally expressed, but which, on reflection, appeared to himself too severe, he adds, in a note, “I am ashamed of what I formerly wrote on this subject. I have been accused of irréligion without deserving it; I have been accused of disaffection to the government, and deserved it as little; I was guilty of a real attack upon the rights of humanity, and I have been reproached by nobody.”

If many of the views exhibited in this work are now divested of novelty, and if, through the general adoption of them by the most cultivated nations, we are led to forget that they were once hidden or excluded, such is the fate of all improvement as well as of all discovery. Nor does it detract from the true character of this interesting performance, that in some enlightened countries, and in the more propitious climates of political liberty, many of the important doctrines which it inculcated were already recognised in the systems of the law.^[3. In the most favoured countries of liberty, however, the reception of some of these principles had been comparatively recent; while of others, the establishment seems even yet to be remote. That work which has tended most to diffuse a knowledge of the progress and spirit of the English laws, viz. the Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone, was not published till the close of the year 1765, although his plan of delivering a public lecture on the judicial system of his country was formed in 1753. The professorship at Oxford, which gave full effect to that plan, was instituted by Mr Viner in 1758. ] Beccaria was [7:4:504]among the first by whom these principles were publicly ' avowed, under a government in whose institutions they had no place, and over whose judicial administration they exercised no influence; and, when the age and country in which he wrote are considered, the boldness of his statements is not less to be admired than the justness of his reasoning. It is his honourable distinction, likewise, and that of the friends who shared his labours and his views, to have preserved, in the prosecution of these objects, an unblemished loyalty towards their prince, and, while combating, with manly perseverance, the errors which prevailed in the fundamental principles of legislation, to have abstained from all attacks which might either directly weaken the authority of the laws, or disturb the administration of the government.

According to the just exposition given by the author himself, the true tendency of such a work is not to lessen the power of the law, but to increase its influence, inasmuch as opinion has a greater command over the minds of men than force. It has frequently been repeated, indeed, that national manners must precede laws; and in the only allowable sense of that maxim, the same might be said, perhaps, with equal truth, of opinions. But the authority of this dictum, and the extent to which it may be followed, are not unfrequently mistaken. An important distinction is apt to be overlooked, between those general laws, which, as they are founded in permanent principles of our nature, admit of being drawn from the first springs, but which have been disturbed by ignorance, or a barbarous policy, or the temporary dominion of some prevailing passion—and those artificial or secondary arrangements, which the circumstances and stages of political society may equally render necessary in times of knowledge, and tranquillity, and civilization. It is to the latter class only that the maxim referred to can have any just application. But it may well be questioned, whether, in any case whatever, the popular feeling and opinion should be allowed to precede, by any considerable interval, the act of the legislature. It seems, on the contrary, to be a valuable secret in legislation, and one of its most important ends, to seize the proper moment for accomplishing that union. Above all, it is expedient, in those branches of the law which are interwoven with and derive their support from the moral feelings, that a legislator should seek to anticipate every better tendency of public sentiment. Through want of a well-timed interference in such cases, many advantages are relinquished, as well in the concocting and framing of the laws themselves, as in that silent influence which a well-directed system of jurisprudence carries into the opinions and habits of a community.

Of the prospects which Beccaria himself entertained as to the probable influence of his work, a judgment may be formed from the sentence of Lord Bacon, which he prefixed to some of the editions, “It is not to be expected in any difficult undertaking, of whatever kind, that the same person who sows the seed should also reap the harvest; but there must, of necessity, be a preparation, and gradual progress to maturity.”

The book was received in foreign countries with avidity, and procured for its author an immediate and high reputation. “Never,” says a writer in the Biographie Universelle, “ did so small a book produce so great an effect.” I he medal given by the Academy of Bern was instantly bestowed upon Beccaria; and the empress Catherine II. invited him to St Petersburg, with the offer of an honourable station at her court; a proposal which was partly the means of procuring him a similar distinction at home. Of the reception which the work obtained in France, particularly among the literary societies of Paris, evidence is afforded by the correspondence of the Baron de Grimm. “This book,” he writes, in a letter dated 1st August 1765* “is by Μ. Beccaria, a Milanese gentleman, who is said bγ some to be an abbé, by others a lawyer, but who, I answer for it, is one of the best heads at this moment in Europe." “You will not find in the Milanese philosopher,” he elsewhere observes, “either the pitch or compass of genius which characterize the writings of the President Montesquieu; but you will discover a mind that is luminous, profound, correct, and penetrating.” And he justly adds, that his is one of the few precious books, qui font penser. It was translated into French by the Abbé Morellet in 1766; and Voltaire soon after published a commentary upon it, under the assumed title of Un Avocat de Besançon. With respect to the former production, the translator took some liberties with the method and distribution of the work, which were not altogether warrantable. Voltaire’s commentary is written in the light style peculiar to him; and was evidently intended as a vehicle for certain opinions of his own, with which the spirit and object of the original publication are entirely unconnected. But the circumstance itself sufficiently marks the impression which that publication had made, and the prominence of the views which it developed. It was rapidly translated into various other languages; its maxims became a species of current coin through a great part of Europe; and the sanction of the author’s reasoning was thought not unworthy of being resorted to in British tribunals.

Although followed by many others, Beccaria’s was the first work of note, in which the application of a milder and more sound system of penal jurisprudence was explicitly enforced. Nor would it be at all extravagant to refer some of the great improvements which from this era were successively introduced into the written laws of different European monarchies, to the direct influence of the opinions thus generally diffused. Many such enactments, at least, were from this time promulgated in a tone more consonant than heretofore with the dictates of humanity and equitable rule. Of this description were, among others, not only the urbarium, or regulations concerning villanage, issued in 1764, by the empress Maria Teresa, but also the more extended designs which took effect, at a somewhat later period, in the various reformed codes, published by the empress Catherine, the emperor Joseph IL, the grand duke of Tuscany, and the Danish government under the administration of the late Count Bernstorf.

At one period a storm seemed to be preparing against the marquis in his own country, by those who probably intended, in this form, a service to the government; but it was soon dispersed by the authority of the government itself. Beccaria had considered it his duty to communicate to Count Firmiani the offers which had been made to him by the empress Catherine, and the intelligence was transmitted by the viceroy to his own court. The conduct of Prince Kaunitz-Ritzberg, on the occasion, is highly honourable to that minister and to his sovereign. Instead of treating the communication as a matter of no account, he makes it the subject of a long dispatch, and of repeated instructions. In one of these papers, dated 27th April 1767, after requiring particular information respecting the personal character of Beccaria, he adds, “Supposing his good qualities to preponderate, it would be desirable that the country should not lose a man whose fund of knowledge is so considerable, and who, as appears from his book, possesses a mind habituated to reflection, above all in our present penury of thinking and philosophical men; besides that it would do little honour to the whole administration to be anticipated by foreigners in the due [7:4:505] estimation of talents.”^[4. The originals of these dispatches are among the state papers in the public archives of Milan. ] Nor were these merely empty professions; they were almost immediately followed by an imperial order for establishing, in the palatine college at Milan, a professorship of public law and economics, under the title of Scienze Camerali. To this chair, expressly endowed for him by a distinction so honourable, the marquis was appointed on the 1st of November 1768, and commenced the duties of it in the month of January following. From the preliminary discourse (yproluzwne) which he pronounced on this occasion, and in which he briefly sets forth the objects of the institution, and some of his own leading opinions regarding them, it appears that the only instructions which he received from the regency on his appointment, consisted in an order to deliver his discourses in the vulgar tongue; an injunction of which the motives are honourable to that government, in common with all the circumstances attending this transaction. His lectures, which he received a special permission to deliver in his own house, attracted much notice. They were not published during his life; but have since appeared, under the title of Elementi di Economia Pubbliea, in the compilation of the Scrittori Classici Italiam di Economia Politica, printed at Milan.^[5. The editor states that this publication was made from a copy of the discourses, transcribed for the author himself when he visited Paris in 1776. ]

As he had, in his former work, set out with stating the object of municipal law to be “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” so here the same universal principle serves him for a guide; and he assumes it as the aim of public economy “to provide with peace and safety, things necessary and convenient for the whole community.” He classes the objects of political economy under five heads; agriculture, manufactures, comm’erce, finance, and policy; comprehending, under the latter, those laws and institutions which have a respect to the sciences, to education, to police in the modern sense of that word, and to the various means of public defence and security. The design was not completed; no trace, at least, appears in the work published under the above title relative to the subjects of finance or public policy.^[6. Some of the others, too, are treated rather briefly. ITehas himself defended this method of teaching by the following just and striking observations, in that part of the work where he discourses of Interest: “But woe to the teacher who would say all that is to bε said, and leave nothing to the penetration of the learner. What is heard slips away and vanishes from the hearer’s mind, unless he has an opportunity of opposing the re-action, as it were, of his own intellect, to the impressions of his instructor; and more light is.thrown upon a science by one process of exact reasoning which we carry on for ourselves, and it is more deeply and firmly rooted in us by that single operation, than by many and repeated trains of reasoning conducted by another.” ] In estimating the value of these speculations, it is no less necessary than in the case of the former work, to consider them with a reference to the state of science at the time, rather than to the present extension of knowledge in this department. Under the first three divisions he enters at considerable length into some of the most interesting discussions which have arisen in this wide field; particularly as to the principles of public policy in regard to agriculture, to the commerce of grain, and foreign commerce generally, and to money and exchange.^[7. Under the head of Agriculture, he proposes the scheme of an experimental farm to be carried on at the public expense, as a school of that science, and enters into some detail of its objects and regulations. ] In perspicuity of language, and distinct and patient illustration, the style of these discourses bears a considerable resemblance to that of the Wealth of Nations; but the coincidence between the two works, in some general and fundamental doctrines, is still more remarkable and interesting. Beccaria does not appear to have adopted the particular theory of the French economists, which was developed about that time; although his practical doctrines on some of the most important points were conformable to the conclusions deduced from that system.^[8. Mirabeau’s Tableau Εeοιιοmi(jue had already appeared in the publication entitled La Philosophie Rurale; as well as various papers∙ Quesnay. ]

Among other inferences, to which the course of his reasoning leads him, as it were, by many different roads, may be noticed one, which he has himself ventured to state as a general proposition, and which marks the caution as well as enlargement of his mind in subjects of complicated inquiry. “Every restriction on freedom,” he observes, “whether in the case of commerce or any other, ought to be a result from the necessity of preventing an actual disorder, not the effect of a purpose or aim at amelioration.” And he has repeated the same doctrine under different views in various other passages.^[9. For example, “The operations of Economics amount only to not permitting, and most frequently to letting alone.” ] On all these subjects he exercises, without ostentation, the privilege of examining and judging for himself; and in doing so, although he expresses himself with plainness and energy,^[10. “Con un non fanatico vigore,” as he has himself somewhere expressed it. But on occasions where he conceived that there might be a danger of inflaming the passions, he has claimed the tribute due to him for employing a style “beyond the reach of the uninormed and impatient multitude.” ] he is never dogmatical. He observes this further dictate of a sound philosophy,—to refrain as long as possible from any very general conclusions; and, although he appears to have disengaged his mind from the power of common and hereditary notions respecting political economy, he does not, by a transition too often made, substitute dangerous or extravagant positions in their place. He is even more distinguished by the temperate use which he makes of his liberty, than by the independence which secured him from the chain.

During the same period in which he pursued these labours, Beccaria undertook another literary task of a very different description, and commenced an Inquiry into the Nature of Style. ^[11. Riccrehe intorno alia Natur a dello Stile. ] A first part of this Inquiry was published in 1770; but the author does not appear to have prosecuted his intention, and only one detached portion of the remainder was found among his papers.^[12. This additional chapter is given in the edition printed at Milan in 1809. ] The apology which he makes for this apparent deviation from his usual objects of pursuit, drawn from a consideration of the connection subsisting between the study of the fine arts, and that of moral and political science, affords a pleasing proof of the natural expansiveness of his mind.^[13. In no part of his writings is the enlargement of his comprehension, as well as soundness of his judgment, more to be remarked, than m the Treatise on the State of Currency, which was his first publication, and written at the age of twenty-seven. ]

His scientific and literary studies were now to be interrupted, however, by new and more flattering marks of distinction from his government. By an imperial order of the 29th April 1771, he was appointed a member of the Supreme Economic Council; on the suppression of which, he was transferred to the magistracy of state; and, lastly, by a dispatch of the 17th January 1791, he was named one [7:4:506] of the Board for Reform of the Judicial Code, civil and criminal. His activity and usefulness in the discharge of these great trusts are best proved by the circumstance, that some of the most important matters in those different departments were committed to his direction, and regulated by his counsels. The most remarkable of his state papers were, various Ordinances relative to the grain; a very important Dispatch transmitted to the Court in 1771, which gave rise to the reform of the public money in 1778; a Plan proposed in 1780 for effecting a uniformity in the weights and measures; and certain Proposals, in 1786, founded on the tables of the population. His writings of this description are characterized by method, perspicuity, and precision. It deserves to be particularly noticed respecting his scheme for the equalization of measures, that, of the different natural bases for exact measurement, he explicitly recommends that which may be obtained from the celestial bodies, and, in the Application of it, proposes to employ the decimal method of division; being the same system which was afterwards adopted by the late government of France.^[14. In the mathematical calculations connected with this subject, he was assisted, as he himself states, by Frisi, Professor of Mathematics at Pisa; and in the mechanical part by his brother Annibale. ]

In the year 1776 Beccaria made a journey to France, in company with his friend Alessandro Verri. He remained at Paris for about three weeks, which he passed chiefly in the society of D’Alembert and other eminent men of letters; and, on his return, he visited Voltaire. This journey seems to have been the only considerable incident which, during a period of twenty-five years, diversified his manner of life, or interrupted his official duties. He died of apoplexy, in the year 1793. According to the editor of his Elementi, in 1804, his death was unnoticed by his country, and his tomb remained without a name or an epitaph.

Beccaria was twice married. He was stedfast in his friendships; modest, but tenacious of his opinions. He took pleasure in the society of literary men, and avoided that of the great. It is related of him, that the king of Naples, while at Milan, twice attempted to visit him at his house; but that the marquis found means, on both occasions, to escape the honour intended for him by his majesty. His exertions in the service of the public, and, above all, his earnest endeavours to promote, by every means, the cause of science, and a liberal system of education, formed the chief feature of his life. On the latter topic he has made many forcible and eloquent appeals, in the course of his different writings; and some passages of this description, which are interspersed in his discourses of Political Economy, are not less to be admired for their intrinsic excellence, than they are interesting from the circumstances in which they were written, and the contrasts which they indirectly exhibit.

One trait of his constitutional disposition or confirmed habit has been recorded, as furnishing a remarkable exception to the general vigour of his intellectual character, —that, notwithstanding the force with which he combated the prejudices and unreasonable apprehensions of other men, he was himself subject, when left alone, to an unconquerable timidity. We are not told whether this tendency was ascribed to early habits and a faulty education, or supposed to be the consequence of some sudden and fatal impression, which remained indissolubly associated with certain outward circumstances, or in what other manner it was formed and perpetuated. On a superficial view, it seems to denote a mind radically weak. But this is not a necessary or a just inference. The fact is, indeed, singular, and deeply impressive; but, in truth, it only serves as a new example to prove how mixed is the nature of our frame; how imperfectly the understanding acts upon the will, and the will upon the moral part; and how many things appear to be within the jurisdiction of our reason which, nevertheless, are superior to its control.

This is not the place to engage in a more particular examination of the spirit and scope of Beccaria’s writings. He is said to have expressed, at least during the early part of his life, too unqualified an approbation of the works of Helvetius, and others belonging to the same school of philosophy. On this score some excuse may, perhaps, be found for him in the attractions which the style of the author now mentioned possesses for a youthful and ardent mind. It is to be observed, likewise, that, when he expressed this admiration of the productions alluded to, the Systeme de la Nature had not yet made its appearance. Nor is it to be supposed that he could be insensible to the notice and the applause of such men as then held the stations of greatest eminence in the scientific world. Yet whatever temptations he may have been exposed to from the influence of some of his literary associates, it is consolatory to reflect, that, neither in the works which he himself gave to the public, nor in those which have been brought to light since his death, are sentiments to be found which have a tendency to subvert any one foundation of private or of public good. His labours were beneficent, and their natural fruits the dissemination of useful knowledge, the increase of industry, and the improvement of social order. But he was not fated to witness the spectacle which ensued, or to be an observer of that moral crisis, of the results of which it may be questioned, if, hitherto, they have less disturbed the calculations of the friends of humanity, than baffled the counsels of its foes.

Some further information with respect to Beccaria’s publications will be found in the Notizie prefixed to his Economia Pubblica (JScrittori Classici Italiani, tom. xi.); in the fourth volume of the Biographic Universelle, printed at Paris in 1811; and in the fourth and fifth volumes ol the Correspondence par le Baron de Grimm. In the compilation first mentioned are contained (besides his Elementi) republications of his Jłelazione della Riduziom delle Misure di lunghezza all’ Uniformità, per lο staiο d∣ Milano; of his Prolusione letta nxlľ apertura della ηuον( cattedra de Scienze Camerali; and of his inquiry Del Disordine e Dd Rimedi delle Monete. In the same collection is likewise to be found a paper written by him for the periodical work called II Caffé; viz. Tentativo Analiticosù i Cοη∙ trabbandi, being an attempt to apply the algebraical method to certain subjects of political economy. A new edition of Morellet’s French translation of the TreatiseanCrimes and Punishments was published by M. Roederer in 1797; and a version of the same treatise in modern Greek, by Coray, was published at Paris in 1802. (o.o.)

Beccaria, Giambattista, a very ingenious and industrious electrician and practical astronomer, was born at Mondovi on the 2d of October 1716, and entered the religious order of the Pious Schools in 1732. He became a professor of experimental physics, first at Palermo, and then at Rome, and was appointed to the same situation at lurin in 1748: he was afterwards made tutor to the young princes de Chablais and de Carignan, and continued t< reside principally at Turin during the remainder of his life In May 1755 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, to which he afterwards communicated severa papers relating to his favourite pursuits. He died on th £ 27th of May 1781.
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1. The most voluminous and most important of his ' works, entitled Delι Elettrismo Artificiale e Naturali, appeared at Turin, 1753, 4to, and was reprinted in 1772. It was translated into English, and published, with the original engravings, under the title of A Treatise upon Aτ-tificial Electricity, and an Essay on the Mild and Slow Electricity of the Atmosphere. Lond. 1771, 4to.

2. Risposta ad una Lettera intorno al suo Elettrismo. Milan, 1753, 4to.

3. Ltttere dell’ Elettrismo Atmosferico 2da, Ed. 2. Turin, 1758, 4to.

4. Experimenta et Observationes quibus Electricitas vindex late constituitur atque explicatur. Graz. 4to.

The accurate and elaborate experiments related in these works obtained for their author the warm and repeated encomiums of the scientific historian Dr Priestley, and the approbation and friendship of other contemporary philosophers; although it must be confessed that, amidst the multitude of important facts recorded in them, we sometimes observe a want of clearness of arrangement and closeness of reasoning; nor must we attempt to claim for Beccaria either the originality of a Franklin, the mathematical precision of an Aepinus, the enlarged views of a Cavendish, or the neatness and inventive talent of a Volta. The most remarkable novelties which deserve to be distinguished among our author’s experiments and opinions relate to the limited conducting power of water, to the electrification of the air and smoke, to the velocity of electricity, to the reduction of metals by its powers, to the illumination of the solar phosphori by the spsrk, to the light excited by the motion of thê air, and to a variety of meteorological phenomena, especially lightning, storms, rain, water-spouts, ' and atmospherical magnetism. The resistance exhibited by water to the passage of the electric fluid is demonstrated by the luminous appearance of its path, while it passes through more perfect conductors without producing light, as well as by the explosion of glass tubes containing water, through which the spark is taken; and this experiment is extended to the construction of an electrical water-gun, which is said to have carried a small bullet with considerable force.

Father Beccaria observed, about the same time with Mr Canton, that the air surrounding an electrified body was capable of becoming electric by slow degrees, and that it also parted slowly with its electricity; and, by means of some property of this kind, he produced the appearance of a luminous atmosphere about an electrified ball, to which another was presented, in a partial vacuum. 1he smoke of colophony, surrounding an electrified body, enabled it to give longer sparks; but this smoke was little attracted by the body when the heated spoon containing the colophony was insulated. Respecting the velocity of electricity, he relates some experiments, which amply deserve to be confirmed or confuted. He found the effect of a spark occupy at least half a second in passing through 500 feet of wäre, and six and a half through a hempen cord of the same length, although when the cord was wetted, it passed through it in two or three seconds. It is well known, that, in the earlier experiments of Watson, a shock was transmitted through a much longer circuit of wire, without occupying any perceptible interval of time ln its passage. Many of the metals were revived from their oxyds, and mercury was reproduced from cinnabar by the powers of electricity; and our author fancied that he had discovered a common principle in the different metals, as several of them gave the same colour to the urface of the glass to which they were attached. The brilliancy of the electric light was demonstrated by the permanency of its effect on the solar phosphori; and this su ⅛ect was afterwards pursued by various experiments of Canton and others. The light often exhibited by the air rushing into a vacuum is attributed by Beccaria to the friction of the air against the sides of the glass. It may be remarked that the phenomenon is, in all probability, of the same kind as the appearance of light observed long ago in the air-gun by its first inventor, Ctesibius of Alexandria. With respect to atmospherical electricity, Beccaria’s researches were most laborious and extensive, and he made a great variety of experiments illustrative of the nature of lightning, and of storms in general; showing, for instance, the facility with which small bodies are forced into the course of the electric current, as light clouds are made to assist in conveying a stroke of lightning; and proving that evaporation, and the deposition of vapour, are always accompanied by electrical changes. Thunderstorms, in general, he attributes to terrestrial electricity, and supposes the clouds to be merely the channels by which the fluid is carried from one part of the earth’s surface to another, the equilibrium having been first disturbed by chemical changes within the earth; and it must be confessed that this opinion is in some measure countenanced by the frequent connection which is observable between these phenomena and those of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Water-spouts, he assures us on the authority of several eye-witnesses, may certainly be dispersed by pointing swords and knives at them; and, with respect to conductors erected for safety, though he appreciates their utility very highly, he thinks that every large building should be furnished with more than one or two. The electricitas vindex, so often mentioned, is the electricity made sensible in one body by the removal of another which has been situated near it;—a property which afterwards led to the elegant inventions of the electrophorus and the condenser of Wilke and Volta. Our author appears to be somewhat disposed to exaggerate the importance of electrical changes as the causes of other atmospherical phenomena, and, in particular, to overrate the intimacy of the connection of electricity with magnetism. The appearance of the aurora borealis he attributes to the circulation of electricity through the higher regions of the atmosphere, and he was well aware of the magnetical changes which usually accompany this remarkable occurrence.

5. His papers in the Philosophical Transactions are all in Latin. The first is entitled Experiments in Electricity, in a Letter to Dr Franhlin. {Phil. Trans. 1760, p. 514.) These experiments relate principally to the subject of electrical attractions and repulsions, which the author attempts to reduce to the effect of currents of air displaced by the immediate action of the electric fluid. He supposes the air between two bodies, in dissimilar states, to be rarefied by the interchange of their electricity, so as to produce the appearance of attraction; and when the bodies are in similar states, he imagines the air interposed to be the immediate object of their apparently mutual repulsion. The paper is accompanied by a note of Dr Franklin, explanatory of the apparatus employed.

6. An Account of the Double Refractions in Crystals. {Phil. Trans. 1762, p. 486.) The double refraction of rock crystal had been observed by Huygens. Beccaria seems to have imagined that it was not discoverable when the surfaces concerned were parallel to each other; but later observations have shown that his observations were defective in this respect, at the same time that they have confirmed his conjecture respecting the existence of a similar property in almost all crystallized substances.

7. Novorum quorundam in re Electrica Experimentorum Specimen. {Phil. Trans. 1766, p. 105.) In this paper our author defends the simpler theory of Franklin against Mr Symmer’s doctrine of the existence of two separate electric[7:4:508] fluids. He also enumerates a great variety of cases of the excitement of positive or negative electricity by the friction of different substances with glass, hare-skin, a silk stocking, sealing-wax, and sulphur.

8. A second paper, with the same title, appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1767, p. 297. It contains an account of a repetition of experiments on the modification produced in the charge of two or more glass plates, by separating them, and by removing and replacing their coatings. These investigations were principally suggested by the well-known observations of the Jesuits, made at Pekin many years before, and by some subsequent experiments of Mr Symmer. The author calls the effect an oscillation of electricity; it depends on the same causes as the “vindicating electricity,” which he has elsewhere described.

9. De Atrnosphaera Electrica libellus. (Phil. Trans. 1770, p. 277.) The phenomena of induced electricity are here discussed, but not with great precision: the author adverts, however, to the Newtonian demonstration of the equilibrium of the force of a gravitating substance, distributed through the surface of a sphere, with respect to a particle within it, and gives somewhat clearer views of the theory of electricity than his former works had exhibited, but still falls far short of the perfection which Aepinus had attained more than ten years before.

10. A short Letter to Mr John Canton, on his new phosphorus receiving several colours, and only emitting the same, is printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1771, p. 212. Our author admitted the sun’s light through green, red, and yellow glass, and found that the pieces of sulphu-reted lime exposed to it emitted only a light similar to that which had been thrown on them. A multiplicity of later experiments have however shown, that the contrary result is by far the most common; and Zanotti’s earlier observations have been fully confirmed by Wilson, Grosser, and Seebeck.

11. In 1759 Beccaria received orders from his sovereign, in consequence of a suggestion of Boscovich, to measure the length of a degree of the meridian in the immediate neighbourhood of Turin: the measurement was completed in 1768, and an account of it was published under the title of Gradus Taurinensis, Turin, 1774, 4to; prefaced by a proper compliment to the memory of the monarch who patronized the undertaking, and to the virtues of his successors, under whose auspices it was completed. The result did not, however, exhibit the appearance of any great accuracy or good fortune; for there is not only a difference of one seventieth of the whole in the lengths of the degree computed from the northern and southern portions of the arc, of 27' and 4P respectively, but the length deduced from the whole arc, which is 57468∙59 French toises, is 445 toises more than would be inferred from other measurements in the neighbouring latitudes; hence it appears to have been thought necessary by later astronomers to reject the northern portion altogether, and to make some corrections in the calculation from the southern, by which the length of the degree has been reduced to 57069 toises. The zenith sector employed for the observations was made on Boscovich’s construction, the length of the tangent being measured instead of that of the arc, a method by no means calculated to lessen the chances of error. A portable syphon barometer is also described, by means of which the elevations were ascertained; and a number of heights of places in the mountains of Piedmont are recorded.

12. This volume appears to have been the last of Beccaria’s publications: An Essay on Storms and Tempests is mentioned without approbation in the Dictionnaire Historique, but it was probably extracted from some of his

. other works. In his private history and adventures there appears to have been little for a biographer to relate: his ambition having been in a great measure limited, by the religious profession which he had adopted, to the acquirement of literary celebrity, his taste was guided by his prevailing pursuits. His only luxuries consisted in his library and instruments; and on these he expended a considerable part of the remuneration which he received for his services to the public and to his royal pupils. (l. l.)