for integrity in the course of life, and a sense of the truth of the common adage, that “honesty is the best policy.”  But these are acquired habits of thinking.  The child has no natural love of truth, as is experienced by all who have the least acquaintance with early youth.  If they are charged with a fault while they can hardly speak, the first words they stammer forth are a falsehood to excuse it.  Nor is this all:  the temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, will at any time overcome the sentiment of truth, so weak is it within them.  Hence thieves and housebreakers, from a surprisingly early period, find means of rendering children useful in their mystery; nor are such acolytes found to evade justice with less dexterity than the more advanced rogues.  Where a number of them are concerned in the same mischief, there is something resembling virtue in the fidelity with which the common secret is preserved.  Children, under the usual age of their being admitted to give evidence, were necessarily often examined in witch trials; and it is terrible to see how often the little impostors, from spite or in mere gaiety of spirit, have by their art and perseverance made shipwreck of men’s lives.  But it would be hard to discover a case which, supported exclusively by the evidence of children (the confessions under torture excepted), and obviously existing only in the young witnesses’ own imagination, has been attended with such serious consequences, or given cause to so extensive and fatal a delusion, as that which occurred in Sweden.

The scene was the Swedish village of Mohra, in the province of Elfland, which district had probably its name from some remnant of ancient superstition.  The delusion had come to a great height ere it reached the ears of government, when, as was the general procedure, Royal Commissioners were sent down, men well fitted for the duty entrusted to them; that is, with ears open to receive the incredibilities with which they were to be crammed, and hearts hardened against every degree of compassion to the accused.  The complaints of the common people, backed by some persons of better condition, were that a number of persons, renowned as witches, had drawn several hundred children of all classes under the devil’s authority.  They demanded, therefore, the punishment of these agents of hell, reminding the judges that the province had been clear of witches since the burning of some on a former occasion.  The accused were numerous, so many as threescore and ten witches and sorcerers being seized in the village of Mohra; three-and-twenty confessed their crimes, and were sent to Faluna, where most of them were executed.  Fifteen of the children were also led to death.  Six-and-thirty of those who were young were forced to run the gauntlet, as it is called, and were, besides, lashed weekly at the church doors for a whole year.  Twenty of the youngest were condemned to the same discipline for three days only.