BECCARIA, CESARE BONESANA, MARCHESE DE (1738-1794), Italian publicist, was born at Milan and educated in the Jesuit college at Parma. He was a brilliant mathematician, but his principal work was done in economics. He held an official position under the Austrian government, and issued reports on corn supplies, the reform of the coinage, population and other questions. In 1768 he was appointed to a chair of law and economy founded expressly for him at the Palatine college of Milan. In 1771 he was made a councillor of state and a magistrate, and in 1790 he was appointed a member of a public commission for the reform of civil and criminal jurisprudence in Lombardy. His lectures on political economy, published after his death by Custodi, antici pated in a remarkable way the conclusions of Adam Smith. He insisted on the necessity of the division of labour and of the maxi mum return from labour, and deduced from this the nature and function of capital. He also expounded the laws of the relation between the growth of population and subsistence in anticipation of Malthus. In a report dated 1780, he proposed a metric system based on astronomical and nominal magnitudes and physical prop erties. About 1761 he and his friends the Verris formed in Milan a society for the study of social and political questions, and in 1764 they began to issue a periodical, II Gaffe, in imitation of the Spec tator. In the same year Beccaria published the famous little treatise Dei Delitti e delle Pene (On Crimes and Punishments), which passed through six editions in 18 months, and was trans lated into 22 European languages. The French translation, by Morellet (1766), contained an anonymous preface by Voltaire. In the preface to this book first appeared the phrase "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." It advocated the prevention of crime rather than punishment, and promptness in punishment where punishment was inevitable; above all, it condemned confis cation, capital punishment, and torture. Beccaria's ideas directly influenced the reforming activities of Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany (who abolished capital punishment), and of Catherine II., empress of Russia; in England, Bentham and Romilly advo cated his ideas; and his theories were enthusiastically received in France, and were ultilized in the revolutionary code.