tories of the closest kind, administered sometimes by magistrates, sometimes by special commissioners, by judges or privy-councillors, and on several occasions by king James in person. Torture itself could not be more contrary to that sacred maxim of the English law, that no man is bound to accuse himself. From this abuse sprung another of perlaps even greater magnitude: the written depositions so obtained were produced in court, according to the practice of countries which follow the civil law, and the reading of them was held sufficient evidence without the production of the living witnesses even for the purpose of verifying their own depositions, which were not always even signed by themselves. It was on the iniquitous trial of Raleigh, the first for high treason which took place under the reign of James,—that this glaring violation of the rules of English justice first obtrudes itself on our notice. "You try me by the Spanish inquisition,” exclaimed the indignant prisoner, "if you try me by examinations and not by witnesses!" But Coke and the other sages of the law ruled it, that this mode was as legal as the other. It was the more unjust to deny the prisoner the benefit of cross-examining the witnesses against him, because our law did not at this time permit a person put upon his trial by indictment at the king's suit, to call witnesses in his defence; or, which amounted practically to the same thing, it did not authorise the court to administer an oath to persons so called: the admissions and explanations, therefore, which he was able to elicit from the wit

nesses

nesses against him, or the self-contradictions in which he contrived to involve them, formed, with his own justificatory statements, the prisoner's only mode of defence.

It will perhaps surprise the general reader to learn, that it was not till so late a period as the reign of Anne, that an act empowering courts to administer an oath to witnesses for the prisoner silently supplied this capital defect in our jurisprudence; it may surprise him still more to learn on what plea James, at an early period of his reign, had rejected the petition of the house of commons, that he would cause a law to be made to the same effect. Referring to the offer of an addition to his revenue which they had made conditional upon his complying with their wishes in this point, and in the abolition of wardship and other feudal grievances, he said, that no sum of money could induce him to yield in this matter, which, with him, was one of conscience; for if men were daily found to perjure themselves for a horse or an ox, how much more readily would they do so to save the life of a friend! It is not perhaps very improbable in itself that a mind like James's might take this perverse and partial view of such a question; but, when considered in connexion with his attachment to the forms of the civil law, and his evident efforts to take the fate of prisoners as much as possible out of the hands of juries and place it in those of magistrates and judges;-the real motive of his refusal becomes, to say the least, suspicious.

In the year 1614, one Peacham, a clergyman,

was

was apprehended on a charge of high treason on no other ground than the sentiments contained in a sermon found in his writing-desk. As the sermon had neither been preached nor printed, and no corroborating evidence against the author appeared, it was determined that he should be racked to make him accuse himself; an order in council is extant to this effect, signed, among others, by Coke and by Bacon; and the examination of this unhappy victim before the torture, under the torture, between the torture and after the torture, was found and has been published among the papers of Bacon:-an indelible stain upon his memory!

There was another class of criminals, regarded by James himself with no less horror than suspected traitors, against whom, not indeed the rack, but a variety of torments equally barbarous, were employed without remorse, and apparently without the slightest consideration' of the legality or illegality of such inflictions. These were persons suspected of witchcraft and magic. A few particulars respecting some of the most noted trials for these offences will reflect still stronger light on the practices sanctioned by a prince ambitious of the character of the English Justinian.

Sorcery and witchcraft had been crimes recognised by the English law from the earliest times, and they had been punishable by burning till they were declared felony without benefit of clergy by a statute of 33rd Henry VIII. ; yet it does not appear that witch-finding had been a very favorite exercise

of

of superstition or malignity in this country till the accession of James I. The dialogue on Demonology had early exhibited the strength of this prince's faith on these mysterious topics; and we have seen that one of the first of his English statutes was an extension of the penalties of former acts against these offences; which in his native country he had caused or permitted to be prosecuted by modes at which humanity shudders.

"In Scotland a greater refinement of cruelty in inflicting torture was adopted than I have ever read of in any other country. The innocent relations of a suspected criminal were tortured in his presence to wring from him, by the sight of their sufferings, what no corporal pain inflicted upon himself could extort from him. Thus in 1596, a woman being accused of witchcraft, her husband, her son and her daughter, a child of seven years old, were all tortured in her presence to make her confess. (See Arnot's Crim. trials, p. 368.) Whether this was done in any other instance than that of witchcraft, the terror of which seems to have wholly extinguished men's natural feelings, together with their reason, I do not knowa"

During the two-and-twenty years of James's English reign, it is computed that not less than a hundred persons fell victims to the prevalence of a superstition fostered by the royal example; but the most celebrated proceedings of the kind took place at

a MS. collections.

Lancaster

Lancaster in the year 1612, where nineteen unfortunate persons were indicted for witchcraft, ten of whom were convicted and executed. Of the punishment of persons for magical practices, Selden in his "Table talk" offers the following vindication: "The law against witches does not prove there be any; but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men's lives: if one should profess that by turning his hat thrice and crying buz he could take away a man's life, though in truth he could do no such thing, yet this were a just law made by the state; that whosoever should turn his hat thrice and cry buz, with an intention to take away a man's life, shall be put to death." This appears an opinion unworthy of its author; it surely does not belong to human laws to take cognisance of acts incapable of causing any real mischief, however malicious the intention with which they may be performed. In this case, too, experience has shown, that the disbelief of the legislature, marked by the abolition of all laws against the pretended crime, was the true remedy for such practices. The sentiment is quoted here only to introduce the remark, that several of these miserable creatures, oppressed by age, indigence, and the ill opinion of their neighbours, seem in fact to have cherished a rancorous envy and hatred against mankind; and to have practised their mystical ceremonies either with the intention and expectation of causing death or other injury to the objects of their resentment, or for the purpose of extorting gifts from the credu

lous