TORTURE AND THE RACK
had been a feature of Mary Stuart's reign, and not, as it was, the daily expedient of Elizabeth and Cecil, what bursts of indignant eloquence should we not have been favored with by our historian, and what admirable illustrations would it not have furnished him as to the brutalizing tendencies of Catholicity and the superior humanity and enlightenment of Protestantism? Nothing so clearly shows the government of Elizabeth to have been a despotism as her constant employment of torture. Every time she or Cecil sent a prisoner to the rack—and they sent hundreds—they trampled the laws of England under foot. These laws, it is true, sometimes authorized painful ordeals and severe punishments, but the rack never. Torture was never legally authorized in England. But the trickling blood, the agonized cries, the crackling bones, the "strained limbs and quivering muscles" (Froude vol. vi. p. 294) of martyred Catholics make these Tudor practices lovely in Mr. Froude's eyes, and he philosophically remarks, "The method of inquiry, however inconsonant with modern conceptions of justice, was adapted excellently for the outrooting of the truth." (Vol. vii. p. 293)
We can hardly believe that any other man of modern enlightenment could possibly entertain such opinions. They are simply amazing in their cold-blooded and crude ignorance. Torture is not only "inconsonant" with modern conceptions of justice, but also with ancient; for it is condemned even by the sages of the law which authorized it. If Mr. Froude had any knowledge of the civil law, he might have learned something of this matter from the Digests, (Liber xviii. tit. 18.) The passage is too long to cite, but one sentence alone tells us in a few words of the fallacy, danger, and decaption of the use of torture: "Etenim res est fragilis et periculosa, et quæ veritatem fallat."
So much for ancient opinion. And modern justice has rejected the horrible thing, not only on the ground of morality, but because it has been demonstrated to be a promoter of perjury and the worst possible means of "outrooting" the truth.
To return: the case of Cobham is not the only one in which Mr. Froude has prudently profited by criticism, and hastened, in a new edition of his work, to repair his blunder. Even a slight comparison of his first with his last edition will show him to be under deep obligations to his critics, and it would be wise in him to seek to increase his debt of gratitude by fresh corrections.