Note 12 — Chapter I · THE PRECURSORS. AUTHORS WHO TREATED THE SUBJECT BEFORE THE BIRTH OF MODERN CRIMINAL SCIENCE.
Henry P. (Henry Pomeroy) Horton translation
“They have come by different ways, the details of which it is useless to discuss here, to change the original social anarchy, in which these principles were discovered, into administrations more or less imperfect. Violence thus formed the foundation of their rights, but all wished to keep with justice what they got possession of very unjustly. They took precautions to prevent those who assisted them in their wholesale conquest from imitating them in detail. After making sure of the general domain they did not wish any one to be able to dispute the particular distribution of it. They confirmed by regulations all their accomplices in the possession of what they had had the address or the good fortune to seize. They decreed that any one who, seeing these possessions stolen by force, should attempt to secure restitution by the same method, should be punished as guilty of an offense against society.”12