1709 repute* (that is, generally holden and deemed) a witch; and that she had used threatening expressions against persons at enmity with her, who were afterwards visited with the loss of cattle, or the death of friends, and one of whom run mad. The jury, by a majority of voices, found these articles proved, and the Judge ordained the prisoner to be burned on the cheek, and to be banished Scotland for life.The last person who was brought to the stake in Scotland for the crime of witchcraft was condemned by Captain David Ross of Little Daan,† sheriff-depute of Sutherland, A. D. 1722.

Besides, in the sufferings, and tragical end of the persons already specified, human ingenuity seems to have been exhausted in devising variety of torment, against other persons who lay under the suspicion of witchcraft, and who persisted with astonishing for

* Habit and repute is a very dangerous doctrine of the law of Scotland, at this minute in full force, by which a man may be hanged although hardly any charge be exhibited against him, but that he has a bad character. For instance, if a man is charged with stealing a pair of old shoes, value threepence, and with being habit and repute a thief, if the jury find such indictment prov ed, or such prisoner guilty, the Court would by law be bound to sentence the prisoner to be hanged;-if my temerity may be pardoned, for supposing that any such thing exists as a precise established rule of criminal law in Scotland.

It is no small disappointment to me that I cannot lay this trial before the reader. The Sheriff Court Books of the County of Sutherland were carried off by the Sheriff Clerk about fifty years ago. I am somewhat however consoled for my disappoint, ment, by the politeness shewn me by James Traill, Esq. of Hobbister, Advocate, Sheriff-depute of Caithness and Sutherland, who was so obliging at to make a laborious but ineffectual search to recover the books,

titude, in denying the absurd imputation, even when 1709 urged with the sharpest tortures.

*

From the universal and excessive abhorrence entertained at a witch, a suspicion of that crime, independent of judicial severities, was sufficient to render the unhappy object anxious for death.-Thrusting of pins into the flesh, and keeping the accused from sleep, were the ordinary treatment of a witch. But if the prisoner was endued with uncommon fortitude, other methods were used to extort confession. The boots, the caspie-claws, and the pilnie-winks, engines for torturing the legs, the arms, and the fingers, were applied to either sex; and that with such violence, that sometimes the blood would have spouted from the limbs. Loading with heavy irons, and whipping with cords, till the skin and flesh were torn from the bones, have also been the adopted methods of torment.

The bloody zeal of those inquisitors attained to a refinement in cruelty so shocking to humanity,t and so repugnant to justice, as to be almost incredible.

*Mackenzie's Criminal Trials, tit. Witchcraft.

+ Records of Justiciary, June 4, 1596. When Alison Balfour was accused of witchcraft, she was put in the caspie-claws, where she was kept forty-eight hours; her husband was put in heavy irons, her son put in the boots, where he suffered fifty-seven strokes, and her little daughter, of about seven years of age, put in the pilnie-winks, in her presence, in order to make her confess. She did confess. She retracted her confession in the course of the trial; and publicly, at her execution, declared that the confession The mode of tormentwas extorted from her by the torments. ing and executing those miserable women is further illustrated by the authentic account of the expence of burning a witch at Burn castle, near Lauder, A. D. 1649, an original paper, published in Appendix, No. 6.

1709 Not satisfied with torturing the person of the accuswed, their ingenious malice assailed the more delicate

feelings, and ardent affections of the mind. An aged husband, an infant daughter, would have been tortured in presence of the accused, in order to subdue her resolution. Nay, death itselft did not screen the remains of those miserable persons from the malice of their prosecutors. If an unfortunate woman, trembling at a citation for witchcraft, ended her sufferings by her own hands, she was dragged from her house at a horse's tail, and buried under the gallows.

Locke had written upon government, Fletcher had been a patriot statesman, Bolingbroke had been a Minister in the Augustan age of Queen Anne, ere this system of legal murder and torture was abolished. This was an honour which the tardy humanity of their countrymen reserved, almost to the middle of the present century,* for Mr. Conduit, Alderman Heathcote, and Mr. Crosse. These gentlemen brought a. bill into the House of Commons, which was passed into a law, repealing the former statutes against witchcraft, Scots as well as English, and discharging prosecutions for that crime, or for accusing others of that offence.† On the enactment of this statute vanished all those imaginary powers, so absurdly attributed to women oppressed with age and poverty.

While we reflect upon the blind and barbarous superstition of our ancestors, while we bestow the tribute of applause on those humane and liberal se

Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. I. p. 60. October 9, 1679. *Till A. D. 1735,

+ Journals of the House of Commons, Jan. 22, 1735. Geo. 11. ann. 9no, c. 5to.

nators who introduced this law, we cannot help la- 1709 menting that a sect among us looks upon the abolition of the penal statutes against witchcraft, not only as an evil, but a sin.-The Seceders published an act of their associated presbytery at Edinburgh, A. D. 1743. This act, which is full of the most illiberal and absurd doctrines, the most seditious and intolerant spirit, was reprinted at Glasgow so late as the year 1766. In it there is contained the annual confession of sins, which to this day they read from the pulpit. Among the sins national and personal there confessed, are the act of Queen Anne's Parliament for tolerating the Episcopal religion in Scotland, the act for adjourning the Court of Session during the Christmas holidays; as also the penal statutes against witches have been repealed by Parliament, contrary 'to the express law of God.'* The Seceders comprehend a very large body of the populace in Scotland. Their zeal for the renewal of the Covenant, their intolerant spirit, are either not attended to by those who have been exerting their endeavours to arm our populace, or those advocates for a militia little know to what important and dangerous purposes religious zeal may be applied.

It is well deserving of remark, that the same sect which is railing at patronages, and preaching up the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant, should display the most rancorous spirit of opposition to the repeal of the penal laws against Popery and against witchcraft.

* Act for renewing the Covenants, p. 26, 27, 34.

CONCLUSION.

These pages, while they state facts deeply interesting, they at the same time give a melancholy display of human nature. If they present us with the outrageous crimes of the prisoners, they also exhibit what is much more shocking, the legal murders of the Court. Let us inquire whence proceeded a system of penal law, so repugnant to justice, humanity, and policy; and draw the important conclusion.

The want of Science, and of Civil Liberty, is the fundamental source of those proceedings, where Tyranny and Superstition, masked in the solemn garb of Law and Justice, stride horrible, with all their ghastly train, of confiscation, torture, and murder. On the want of Science has been erected the monstrous fabric of Superstition. The want of Civil Liberty has enabled tyrants to sport with the most sacred rights the most tender feelings of mankind. Tyranny and Superstition dictated the barbarous laws, which have brought so many innocent persons to an ignominious death. And the same want of Science, and of Liberty, which gave occasion to the enactment of sanguinary laws, introduced carelessness into the forms of judicial proceedings, and injustice in the measure of legal evidence.

Beyond all her other qualifications, then, let Science be revered as an antidote to Superstition, as a friend to Civil Liberty, and as the true Philosopher's Stone, which in an arbitrary Government transmutes the iron rod of a Tyrant into the golden sceptre of a King, the Father of his People.