654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This part of the regular course is omitted by few, and in some 

 cases is adopted as a ruling life-trait. This was probably the 

 usual result in those early days. 



Another discouraging obstacle to any pleasant theory is that 

 apelike propensity for imitation which kept primitive races fol- 

 lowing the old tracks of their predecessors. Antiquated custom 

 gave them inviolable laws, against which reason and justice might 

 protest in vain. The mere imitative trait has sometimes ruled 

 the action and belief of masses of mankind as surely and un- 

 thinkingly as it does a colony of the simian tribe or a commu- 

 nity of cigarette-using boys. 



A race of beings so tainted with original savagery, so ruled 

 by imitation, and so averse to change, must have found it hard 

 to abolish torture from the court-room. To accomplish the re- 

 form one of the grandest moral battles of the world had to be 

 fought. An ethical rebellion against the allied powers of mon- 

 archy, hierarchy, and aristocracy had to be triumphantly carried 

 through. Necessarily there were brave leaders, who went into 

 the fray with their eyes open to the fate of Jerome and Huss, of 

 an earlier age, who for having dared attack the sin of torture 

 were burned alive by the offended Church. 



It was but recently, speaking comparatively, that the Inquisi- 

 tion, both secular and ecclesiastical, was in full force, and that 

 the reform mentioned was made successful. When the code 

 before us was printed at Vienna, the present writer's grandfather 

 was a youth of thirteen years. America was then already re- 

 formed from her imported sins against justice. The whirlwind 

 of delusion which culminated at Salem had been over for seventy- 

 seven years, and its reaction had blotted from the minds of most 

 Americans much of the witch-belief of former ages. Benjamin 

 Franklin had long been the ambassador of America to his king, 

 pleading for political rights. England had partly reformed her 

 cruel laws. Human torture was not legal in America, save under 

 the cloak of African slavery. 



Yet in the Theresian code. Article 38 is found filling eleven 

 broad pages with the law of torture, as if it were a fundamental 

 institution which would exist forever. It specifies the cases in 

 which courts are warranted in using torture to induce confession, 

 which seem worth giving in full : 



When one is accused by one credible, sworn witness, aided by 

 evidence of previous bad character. 



When, after detection in the act, he boldly denies it. 



When informed against by an accomplice. 



When he has admitted the offense which was known to be 

 committed. 



When any two or more of the following causes concur to 



