LIFE OF BACON. 



passion more powerful than the love of truth ;(//) nor shall 

 we be censured, in future times, for refusing, in excessive 

 obedience to this principle, to admit the evidence of the 

 richest peer of the realm, if he have the interest of six 

 pence in the cause; nor has Sir Matthew Hale been visited 

 with the sin of having condemned and suffered to be 

 executed, a mother and her daughter of eleven years 

 of age, for witchcraft, under the quaint advice of Sir 

 Thomas Brown, one of the first physicians and philosophers 

 of his, or, indeed, of any time, who was devoting his life 

 to the confutation of what he deemed vulgar errors ! (b) 



(a) Beccaria. &quot; The result of torture, then, is a matter of calculation, 

 and depends on the constitution, which differs in every individual, and is 

 in proportion to his strength and sensibility; so that to discover truth by 

 this method is a problem, which may be better solved by a mathematician 

 than a judge, and may be thus stated. The force of the muscles, and the 

 sensibility of the nerves of an innocent person being given, it is required to 

 find the degree of pain necessary to make him confess himself guilty of a 

 given crime.&quot; 



(&) Amy Duny and Rose Callender were tried and condemned at Bury 

 St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, by the Lord Chief Baron Hale ; an account of 

 the trial was printed in his lordship s lifetime. They were tried upon thir 

 teen several indictments : Amy Duny was charged with bewitching Mr. 

 Pacey s children, and causing them to have fits, and when Sir Thomas 

 Brown, the famous physician of his time, who was in court, was desired by 

 my Lord Chief Baron to give his judgment in the case, he declared, &quot; that 

 he was clearly of opinion that the fits were natural, but heightened by the 

 devil, co-operating with the malice of the witches at whose instance he did 

 the villanies ;&quot; and he added, &quot; that in Denmark there had been lately a 

 great discovery of witches who used the very same way of afflicting persons, 

 by conveying pins into them.&quot; This made that great and good man doubt 

 ful, but he was in such fears that he would not so much as sum up the 

 evidence, but left it to the jury with prayers, &quot; that the great God of 

 Heaven would direct their hearts in that weighty matter.&quot; The jury, 

 having Sir Thomas Brown s declaration about Denmark for their encou 

 ragement, in half an hour brought them in guilty upon all the thirteen 

 indictments. After this my Lord Chief Baron gave the law its course, and 

 they were condemned, and died declaring their innocence. 



