Reform
The system of law, its mechanisms of enforcement and the forms of punishment used in the 18th century were primitive and inconsistent. Judges were not professionally trained so many of their decisions were unsatisfactory being the product of incompetence, capriciousness, corruption or political manipulation. The use of torture to extract confessions and a wide range of cruel punishments such as whipping, mutilation and public executions were commonplace. A need for legal rationality and fairness was identified and found an audience among the emerging middle classes whose economic interests lay in providing better systems for supporting national and international trade.
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Famous quotes containing the word reform:
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“...feminism differs from reform of any kind, even franchise reform. Feminists, I should say, are not reformers at all, but rather intellectual biologists and psychologists.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“... the opportunity offered by life to women is far in excess of any offered to men. To be the inspiration is more than to be the tool. To create the world, a greater thing than to reform it.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)