h was manifested in the
persecutions of witches and sorcerers; and, like these, they prove that
enthusiasm, associated with hatred, and leagued with the baser passions,
may work more powerfully upon whole nations than religion and legal
order; nay, that it even knows how to profit by the authority of both, in
order the more surely to satiate with blood the sword of long-suppressed
revenge.

The persecution of the Jews commenced in September and October, 1348, at
Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva, where the first criminal proceedings were
instituted against them, after they had long before been accused by the
people of poisoning the wells; similar scenes followed in Bern and
Freyburg, in January, 1349. Under the influence of excruciating
suffering, the tortured Jews confessed themselves guilty of the crime
imputed to them; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found
in a well at Zoffingen, this was deemed a sufficient proof to convince
the world; and the persecution of the abhorred culprits thus appeared
justifiable. Now, though we can take as little exception at these
proceedings as at the multifarious confessions of witches, because the
interrogatories of the fanatical and sanguinary tribunals were so
complicated, that by means of the rack the required answer must
inevitably be obtained; and it is, besides, conformable to human nature
that crimes which are in everybody's mouth may, in the end, be actually
committed by some, either from wantonness, revenge, or desperate
exasperation: yet crimes and accusations are, under circumstances like
these, merely the offspring of a revengeful, frenzied spirit in the
people; and the accusers, according to the fundamental principles of
morality, which are the same in every age, are the more guilty
transgressors.

Already in the autumn of 1348 a dreadful panic, caused by this supposed
empoisonment, seized all nations; in Germany especially the springs and
wells were built over, that nobody might drink of them or employ their
contents for culinary purposes; and for a long time the inhabitants of
numerous towns and villages used only river and rain water. The city
gates were also guarded with the greatest caution: only confidential
persons were admitted; and if medicine or any other article, which might
be supposed to be poisonous, was found in the possession of a
stranger--and it was natural that some should have these things by them
for their private use--they were fo