The brutalizing effects of capital punishments are clearly seen in these, as in all other instances.  They gradually impart a feeling of indifference to the value of human life, or to the idea of cutting it off by the hand of violence, to all who become accustomed to the spectacle.  In various ways they exercise influences upon the tone and temper of society, which cannot but be regarded with regret by the citizen, the legislator, the moralist, the philanthropist, and the Christian.

Sinclair, in his work called “Satan’s Invisible World Discovered,” gives the following affecting declaration made by one of the confessing witches, as she was on her way to the stake:—­

“Now all you that see me this day know that I am now to die as a witch by my own confession; and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood; I take it wholly upon myself, my blood be upon my own head:  and, as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child; but, being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my coming out of prison, or ever coming in credit again, through the temptation of the Devil, I made up that confession on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than live.”

Sir George Mackenzie says that he went to examine some women who had confessed, and that one of them, who was a silly creature, told him, “under secresie,” “that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but, being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her, and hound dogs at her, and that therefore she desired to be out of the world.”  Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and, upon her knees, called God to witness to what she said.

A wretch, named Matthew Hopkins, rendered himself infamously conspicuous in the prosecutions for witchcraft that took place in the counties of Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, and Huntingdon, in England, in the years 1645 and 1646.  The title he assumed indicates the part he acted:  it was “Witch-finder-general.”  He travelled from place to place; his expenses were paid; and he required, in addition, regular fees for the discovery of a witch.  Besides pricking the body to find the witch-mark, he compelled the wretched and decrepit victims of his cruel practices to sit in a painful posture, on an elevated stool, with their limbs crossed; and, if they persevered in refusing to confess, he would prolong their torture, in some cases, to more than twenty-four hours.  He would prevent their going to sleep, and drag them about barefoot over the rough ground, thus overcoming them with extreme weariness and pain:  but his favorite method was to tie the thumb of the right hand close