650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



liche Frage" or the painful questioning. In this code of explicit 

 directions reference is made to the pictures in the appendix, show- 

 ing all the authorized apparatus for torture. They are drawn, 

 lettered, and explained with the exactness of a patent drawing, 

 and were not to be varied from in the least detail by the judicial 

 operators. This treatise begins with the fundamental definition : 

 " Torture is a lawful means of compulsion to bring to confession 

 a denying malefactor, who, in the absence of full proof, has been 

 strongly accused or perchance to clear him from a burden of 

 suspicion and accusation." This is paraphrased in the Latin note 

 by saying that torture is a subsidiary means of tearing out the 

 truth (eruendce veritatem). 



Part II takes up the whole calendar of crimes, arranged in 

 forty-eight distinct classes, giving to each a brief separate trea- 

 tise combining principles, law, exceptions, penalties, and questions 

 to be used in the trial. More than three fourths of these chapters 

 specially prescribe torture to make the accused convict himself. 

 From blasphemy, the greatest crime in the list, down to the most 

 trivial, a suspected person could in nearly every case be visited 

 with deathly torment upon mere suspicion. 



Human progress exhibits no contrast more surprising than is 

 seen between the mercifulness of to-day and the cruelty of the 

 past. What do we now observe as proofs that mankind does not 

 now approve nor enjoy the bodily suffering of fellow-creatures ? 

 Human slavery largely abolished, with the stocks and whipping 

 post ; cruel punishments prohibited by the Constitution ; capital 

 punishment done away in various sections; painless execution 

 introduced ; all minor penalties reduced to fines and restraint of 

 liberty, with good sanitation of prisons ; anaesthetic medical treat- 

 ment everywhere in use ; corporal punishment in schools becom- 

 ing unfashionable ; humane societies interfering to prevent ill 

 treatment of children and dumb beasts ; and, especially, we see 

 prisoners on trial permitted to sit unfettered and at ease, attended 

 by weeping relatives to excite sympathy; allowed unequal ad- 

 vantages over the prosecution in the selection of a jury ; given 

 the benefit of every doubt, often of the most fictitious; furnished 

 all opportunities for acquittal which money and dishonest counsel 

 can procure ; allowed to testify in their own behalf ; and never re- 

 quired to give an answer that would tend to criminate themselves. 



In contrast with this picture, take the manner of conducting 

 trials under the elaborate rules laid down in the Theresian code. 

 A man accused of felony, such as arson, sedition, sorcery, or poison- 

 ing, must be arrested, jailed, and brought to trial. If two or more 

 so-called witnesses made oath that they believed him guilty, though 

 no positive proof could be found, the court decreed it a casus tor- 

 turce, a proper case for torture, and proceeded to apply some pre- 



