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题目内容
题目材料：
The gap between crime and punishment in preindustrial England has long puzzled historians. Although most criminal trials involved felonies for which the penalty was execution, relatively few convicted criminals were actually executed. This distance between potential and actual applications of the law was traditionally thought to demonstrate the inefficiency of premodern legal systems: historians assumed that before the late eighteenth century, the "success" rates of courts were minimal because the legal system had to function without a modern legal bureaucracy.
Recently, however, the history of legal development has been seen as something other than an increasing administrative ability to apply sentences. Acknowledging, as their predecessors had not, that law enforcement must be understood within a historically specific social context, recent scholars have suggested that, in a non-democratic society, selective enforcement was a valuable tool of class power: a discretionary legal system enabled the ruling classes to maintain social control by exercising a paternalistic power to grant or to deny mercy as they wished.
Recently, however, the history of legal development has been seen as something other than an increasing administrative ability to apply sentences. Acknowledging, as their predecessors had not, that law enforcement must be understood within a historically specific social context, recent scholars have suggested that, in a non-democratic society, selective enforcement was a valuable tool of class power: a discretionary legal system enabled the ruling classes to maintain social control by exercising a paternalistic power to grant or to deny mercy as they wished.
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