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:
“You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized.”
—Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928)
“Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose.... In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires....”
—Elizabeth Hardwick (b. 1916)
“There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of “expediency.” There is no such thing as sliding up- hill. In morals the only sliders are backsliders.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)