The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c6.s2.13

c6.s2.13

Nor in Louis XIV *le grand monarque’s* psychology was there any respect for the rights of the people. He acted on the creed of absolutism, viz., *L'état c'est moi.* Besides, his high-handed measures at home and his unjust wars of aggression constitute a reflection on the political institutions and international morality of the times. Not less “characteristic” of occidental development are the horrors of judicial torture and inhuman penal legislation, both secular and ecclesiastical, which prevailed in Europe from the revival of Roman law in the thirteenth century to the epoch of reform initiated, at any rate in so far as the ideal is concerned, by the Italian jurist Beccaria in his *Crimes and Punishments* towards the end of the eighteenth.¹