Beccaria’s tract did not kill the death penalty but made its legitimacy and morality the subject of intense debate. In Britain and America the history of abolitionism is in some important respects individual. Britain sported a ‘Bloody Code’ that at its peak encompassed over 200 capital crimes. Romilly led the charge against the ‘Bloody Code’ (from 1808) and cited (correctly and with approval) Beccaria. Spokesmen in Parliament for the retentionist Paley (post mortem) were much more numerous. In North America, the influence of Beccaria was initially strong, but the United States is a federal republic, and criminal justice is with the individual states. In a way clearly related to slavery and race, hard-line attitudes to the death penalty have prevailed, especially in the South. The influence of Beccaria has inevitably waned; that punishments have lost their role and ‘appeal’ and deterrent value as a spectacle is one factor in this. Ironically, the hard labour that he advocated has been saddled with the name of ‘penal servitude’, and is the only form of slavery recognized by the US Constitution.