In Italy there was a notable precedent for this <p 160>reform in the Treasury of Fines, established for Tuscany in 1786, and for the kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the penal code of 1819, for the purpose of creating a fund for compensation in cases of judicial error. In 1886 Deputy Pavesi brought in a measure which was not discussed; and this indemnification, which had already been proposed in 1873 by De Falco, keeper of the seals, in his draft of an Italian penal code, was not included in subsequent Bills, mainly on account of the financial difficulties. Amongst writers on criminology, it was advocated in Italy by Carrara, Pessina, and Brusa; in Germany by Geyer and Schwarze; in Belgium by Prins and others, and more recently by M. Garofalo, in his report to the third National Congress on Law, at Florence, in September, 1891. Amongst existing laws, indemnification for judicial errors, whether limited to cases in which the innocence of condemned persons can be proved, or extended to persons wrongfully prosecuted, is included in the penal codes of Hungary and Mexico, and by special laws in Portugal (1884), Sweden (1886), Denmark (1888), and especially in Switzerland, in the cantons of Fribourg, Vaud, Neuch<a^>tel, Geneva, B<a^>le, and Berne. The legal principle that the State ought to indemnify material and moral injury inflicted by its functionaries, through malice or negligence, on a citizen who has done nothing to subject himself to prosecution or condemnation, cannot be seriously contested. But the whole difficulty is reduced to deciding in what cases the right to indemnification ought to be <p 161>recognised, and then to providing a fund out of which the State can discharge this duty. For the latter purpose it would be necessary to include an adequate sum in the Budget. This was done in Bavaria, in 1888, by setting apart 5,000 marks annually; and the first who profited by this provision received a pension of 300 marks per annum, after being rendered incapable of work by seven years' imprisonment for a crime which he had not committed. But if the policy of retrenchment imposed on the European States by their insane military expenditure and their chronic wars prevents the carrying out of this proposal, there is the Italian precedent of the Treasury of Fines, which, with the fines inflicted, or which ought to be inflicted on convicted persons, and the product of prison labour, would provide the necessary amount for the indemnities which the State ought to pay to innocent persons who have been condemned or prosecuted, as well as to the victims of offences.