th parties struggling for the
pre-eminence rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the
trembling balance of the constitution. But the adopted motto of Lord
Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, "_Trial by Jury_."

So late as the year 1761, Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of seventy, was
burnt by these evangelical executioners. His trial was printed at
Amsterdam, 1762, from the Lisbon copy. And for what was this unhappy
Jesuit condemned? Not, as some have imagined, for his having been
concerned in a conspiracy against the king of Portugal. No other charge
is laid to him in this trial but that of having indulged certain
heretical notions, which any other tribunal but that of the Inquisition
would have looked upon as the delirious fancies of a fanatical old man.
Will posterity believe, that in the eighteenth century an aged visionary
was led to the stake for having said, amongst other extravagances, that
"The holy Virgin having commanded him to write the life of Anti-Christ,
told him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John
the Evangelist; that there were to be three Anti-Christs, and that the
last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; and
that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies."

For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt in recent times.
Granger assures us, that in his remembrance a _horse_ that had been
taught to tell the spots upon cards, the hour of the day, &c., by
significant tokens, was, together with his _owner_, put into the
Inquisition for _both_ of them dealing with the devil! A man of letters
declared that, having fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so
much as the ignorance of the inquisitor and his council; and it seemed
very doubtful whether they had read even the Scriptures.[53]

One of the most interesting anecdotes relating to the terrible
Inquisition, exemplifying how the use of the diabolical engines of
torture forces men to confess crimes they have not been guilty of, was
related to me by a Portuguese gentleman.

A nobleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and friend was
imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism,
addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the
inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The
physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the
torture; and, as was usually the case, a