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?

“Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor.”

     ["Pain will make even the innocent lie.”—­Publius Syrus, De Dolore.]

Whence it comes to pass, that him whom the judge has racked that he may not die innocent, he makes him die both innocent and racked.  A thousand and a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions, amongst whom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the trial Alexander put upon him and the progress of his torture.  But so it is that some say it is the least evil human weakness could invent; very inhumanly, notwithstanding, and to very little purpose, in my opinion.

Many nations less barbarous in this than the Greeks and Romans who call them so, repute it horrible and cruel to torment and pull a man to pieces for a fault of which they are yet in doubt.  How can he help your ignorance?  Are not you unjust, that, not to kill him without cause, do worse than kill him?  And that this is so, do but observe how often men prefer to die without reason than undergo this examination, more painful than execution itself; and that oft-times by its extremity anticipates execution, and perform it.  I know not where I had this story, but it exactly matches the conscience of our justice in this particular.  A country-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one of his soldiers that he had taken from her children the little soup meat she had left to nourish them withal, the army having consumed all the rest; but of this proof there was none.  The general, after having cautioned the woman to take good heed to what she said, for that she would make herself guilty of a false accusation if she told a lie, and she persisting, he presently caused the soldier’s belly to be ripped up to clear the truth of the fact, and the woman was found to be right.  An instructive sentence.