stition dips her hand in the blood of the persons accused, and
records in the annals of jurisprudence their trials and the causes
alleged in vindication of their execution. Respecting other fantastic
allegations, the proof is necessarily transient and doubtful, depending
upon the inaccurate testimony of vague report and of doting tradition.
But in cases of witchcraft we have before us the recorded evidence upon
which judge and jury acted, and can form an opinion with some degree of
certainty of the grounds, real or fanciful, on which they acquitted or
condemned. It is, therefore, in tracing, this part of Demonology, with
its accompanying circumstances, that we have the best chance of
obtaining an accurate view of our subject.

The existence of witchcraft was, no doubt, received and credited in
England, as in the countries on the Continent, and originally punished
accordingly. But after the fourteenth century the practices which fell
under such a description were thought unworthy of any peculiar
animadversion, unless they were connected with something which would
have been of itself a capital crime, by whatever means it had been
either essayed or accomplished. Thus the supposed paction between a
witch and the demon was perhaps deemed in itself to have terrors enough
to prevent its becoming an ordinary crime, and was not, therefore,
visited with any statutory penalty. But to attempt or execute bodily
harm to others through means of evil spirits, or, in a word, by the
black art, was actionable at common law as much as if the party accused
had done the same harm with an arrow or pistol-shot. The destruction or
abstraction of goods by the like instruments, supposing the charge
proved, would, in like manner, be punishable. _A fortiori_, the
consulting soothsayers, familiar spirits, or the like, and the obtaining
and circulating pretended prophecies to the unsettlement of the State
and the endangering of the King's title, is yet a higher degree of
guilt. And it may be remarked that the inquiry into the date of the
King's life bears a close affinity with the desiring or compassing the
death of the Sovereign, which is the essence of high treason. Upon such
charges repeated trials took place in the courts of the English, and
condemnations were pronounced, with sufficient justice, no doubt, where
the connexion between the resort to sorcerers and the design to
perpetrate a felony could be clearly proved. We would not, indeed, be
di