essity
can alone palliate; and the defects of evidence were diligently supplied
by the use of torture.

The deceitful and dangerous experiment of the criminal question, as
it is emphatically styled, was admitted, rather than approved, in
the jurisprudence of the Romans. They applied this sanguinary mode of
examination only to servile bodies, whose sufferings were seldom weighed
by those haughty republicans in the scale of justice or humanity; but
they would never consent to violate the sacred person of a citizen,
till they possessed the clearest evidence of his guilt. The annals
of tyranny, from the reign of Tiberius to that of Domitian,
circumstantially relate the executions of many innocent victims; but, as
long as the faintest remembrance was kept alive of the national freedom
and honor, the last hours of a Roman were secured from the danger of
ignominious torture. The conduct of the provincial magistrates was not,
however, regulated by the practice of the city, or the strict maxims of
the civilians. They found the use of torture established not only among
the slaves of oriental despotism, but among the Macedonians, who obeyed
a limited monarch; among the Rhodians, who flourished by the liberty
of commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted and
adorned the dignity of human kind. The acquiescence of the provincials
encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a
discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or
plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly
proceeded to confound the distinction of rank, and to disregard the
privileges of Roman citizens. The apprehensions of the subjects urged
them to solicit, and the interest of the sovereign engaged him to
grant, a variety of special exemptions, which tacitly allowed, and even
authorized, the general use of torture. They protected all persons of
illustrious or honorable rank, bishops and their presbyters, professors
of the liberal arts, soldiers and their families, municipal officers,
and their posterity to the third generation, and all children under
the age of puberty. But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new
jurisprudence of the empire, that in the case of treason, which included
every offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from a hostile
intention towards the prince or republic, all privileges were suspended,
and all conditions were reduced to the same ignominious level. A