As an ill conscience fills us with fear, so a good one gives us greater confidence and assurance; and I can truly say that I have gone through several hazards with a more steady pace in consideration of the secret knowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my intentions: 

         “Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra
          Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo.”

["As a man’s conscience is, so within hope or fear prevails, suiting
to his design.”—­Ovid, Fast., i. 485.]

Of this are a thousand examples; but it will be enough to instance three of one and the same person.  Scipio, being one day accused before the people of Rome of some crimes of a very high nature, instead of excusing himself or flattering his judges:  “It will become you well,” said he, “to sit in judgment upon a head, by whose means you have the power to judge all the world.”  Another time, all the answer he gave to several impeachments brought against him by a tribune of the people, instead of making his defence:  “Let us go, citizens,” said he, “let us go render thanks to the gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians as this day,” and advancing himself before towards the Temple, he had presently all the assembly and his very accuser himself following at his heels.  And Petilius, having been set on by Cato to demand an account of the money that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch, Scipio being come into the senate to that purpose, produced a book from under his robe, wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts and disbursements; but being required to deliver it to the prothonotary to be examined, he refused, saying, he would not do himself so great a disgrace; and in the presence of the whole senate tore the book with his own hands to pieces.  I do not believe that the most seared conscience could have counterfeited so great an assurance.  He had naturally too high a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune, says Titius Livius, to know how to be criminal, and to lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence.  The putting men to the rack is a dangerous invention, and seems to be rather a trial of patience than of truth.  Both he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals the truth, and he who has not:  for why should pain sooner make me confess what really is, than force me to say what is not?  And, on the contrary, if he who is not guilty of that whereof he is accused, has the courage to undergo those torments, why should not he who is guilty have the same, so fair a reward as life being in his prospect?  I believe the ground of this invention proceeds from the consideration of the force of conscience:  for, to the guilty, it seems to assist the rack to make him confess his fault and to shake his resolution; and, on the other side, that it fortifies the innocent against the torture.  But when all is done, ’tis, in plain truth, a trial full of uncertainty and danger what would not a man say, what would not a man do, to avoid so intolerable torments?