Note 40 — Chapter IV · GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING LOMBROSO’S LIFE-WORK AS A SOCIAL REFORMER, HIS METHODS, AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

Of parliamentary government he writes (“Delitto politico,” p. 531): “Parliamentary government, which has with justice been stigmatized as the greatest superstition of modern times, offers greater and ever greater obstacles to the introduction of a good method of government, so that, whilst the electors lose sight more and more of the high ideals of the State, some of the elected representatives obtain a freedom from responsibility which tends to the advantage of crime—which may, indeed, make of them occasional criminals, if they have not inherited the criminal nature. For five centuries Italy has fought for the abolition of the privileges of priests, feudal lords, and kings; and now in the name of freedom we endow 500 kinglets with inordinate privileges, and even free them from liability to prosecution for ordinary crime!”

And of universal suffrage he writes: “In the general view, universal suffrage works for the abolition of class distinctions, but in the hands of the corrupt and the uncultured it may be directly subversive of freedom.

“Let us therefore advocate everything that can be for the advantage of the common people, but let us at the same time give these latter only so much power as may be necessary to wring from the upper classes the concessions needful for the good of the commonalty” (“L’uomo delinquente: Cause e rimedii,” 1897, pp. 442, 443).