17 - Of the exchequer

Summary

There was a time when almost all punishments were pecuniary. Men's crimes were the prince's patrimony. Attacks on the public security were an object of financial gain. Those who were charged with defending the public security had an interest in seeing it broken. The way in which punishment was exacted was by a suit between the exchequer, which dealt these punishments, and the criminal – a civil litigation, more private than public, which gave to the exchequer more rights than those ordained for the public security, and to the criminal more impositions than would be necessary to set an example. The judge, therefore, was more counsel for the exchequer than an impartial seeker after the truth, a tax official rather than a protector and minister of the laws.

But since, in this system, to confess that one was a transgressor was to confess that one was in debt to the exchequer, which was the aim of these criminal proceedings, so it came about (as still obtains, effects lasting long after their causes) that the whole arrangement of the criminal law centred on a confession of guilt put together in such a way as to favour and not to harm the interests of the exchequer. Without such a confession, a criminal convicted on indubitable evidence would receive a lesser punishment than the established one. Without it, he would not undergo torture for other similar crimes which he might have committed.