them
for having been too severe in the _tortures_ they had made these men
suffer[22]." We have only to reflect on this passage of {48} Rapin, to
appreciate the evidence furnished by the state trials of those days, the
_actio in proditores_, and the reporters of "Criminels de Lege Majeste," so
often cited by the enemies of the Jesuits. It was not only in catholic
countries, we see, that the rack and other modes of torture were made the
tests of truth; but they have been so long abhorred by Englishmen, that I
fondly believed that there was not one among us who would allow himself to
cite the efficacy of them as a proof in any argument. Their _inefficacy_,
indeed, may justly be cited in testimony; for what they extort is in all
probability false, what they fail to extort is in all probability true. If
this reasoning be sound, how many blameless, how many virtuous men has the
hand of party in this country consigned to cruel deaths[23]! In addition to
what Rapin {49} states of Elizabeth, it is not irrelevant to add here what
Camden reports of her on the same subject: he tells us expressly, that she
thought most of the priests were innocent, or, which is the same thing,
that she did not believe them guilty. His words are, _Plerosque tamen ex
misellis his sacerdotibus exitii in patriam conflandi conscios fuisse non
credidit_[24].

Of the fairness of their trials in still later times, those of Charles II,
we have specimens in Hume's History. Why was not Hume quoted by the writer
of the pamphlet? We find more of Jesuits in his pages than in Rapin's, and
something against them too; but Hume, like Robertson, was guided by
principle {50} on this subject; that is, he stated the character of the
order from the pictures which he had received of it; but, at the same time,
he exposed the injustice of the trials in which the Jesuits were involved,
and the invalidity of the evidence produced against them. The whole of his
sixty-seventh chapter is, in fact, however unintended, a memorial in favour
of the Jesuits, and a philippic on their enemies. As these pages may fall
into the hands of some persons who may not have the opportunity or the
leisure to read this portion of his history, I shall make the following
extract, as a testimony of the horrid injustice practised in former times;
and I am very much mistaken if any man of feeling and sound intellect will
read it without indignation against the Oateses and Bedloes of the present
day.--"B