Such were the obstacles arising from the vanity of philosophers and the imperfection of their science, which suspended the strength of their appeal to reason and common sense against the condemning of wretches to a cruel death on account of crimes which the nature of things rendered in modern times totally impossible.  We cannot doubt that they suffered considerably in the contest, which was carried on with much anger and malevolence; but the good seed which they had sown remained uncorrupted in the soil, to bear fruit so soon as the circumstances should be altered which at first impeded its growth.  In the next letter I shall take a view of the causes which helped to remove these impediments, in addition, it must always be remembered, to the general increase of knowledge and improvement of experimental philosophy.

LETTER VII.

       Penal Laws unpopular when rigidly exercised—­Prosecution of Witches
    placed in the hand of Special Commissioners, ad
    inquirendum—­Prosecution for Witchcraft not frequent in the Elder
    Period of the Roman Empire—­Nor in the Middle Ages—­Some Cases took
    place, however—­The Maid of Orleans—­The Duchess of
    Gloucester—­Richard the Third’s Charge against the Relations of the
    Queen Dowager—­But Prosecutions against Sorcerers became more common
    in the end of the Fourteenth Century—­Usually united with the Charge
    of Heresy—­Monstrelet’s Account of the Persecution against the
    Waldenses, under pretext of Witchcraft—­Florimond’s Testimony
    concerning the Increase of Witches in his own Time—­Bull of Pope
    Innocent VIII.—­Various Prosecutions in Foreign Countries under this
    severe Law—­Prosecutions in Labourt by the Inquisitor De Lancre and
    his Colleague—­Lycanthropy—­Witches in Spain—­In Sweden—­and
    particularly those Apprehended at Mohra.

Penal laws, like those of the Middle Ages, denounced against witchcraft, may be at first hailed with unanimous acquiescence and approbation, but are uniformly found to disgust and offend at least the more sensible part of the public when the punishments become frequent and are relentlessly inflicted.  Those against treason are no exception.  Each reflecting government will do well to shorten that melancholy reign of terror which perhaps must necessarily follow on the discovery of a plot or the defeat of an insurrection.  They ought not, either in humanity or policy, to wait till the voice of the nation calls to them, as Mecaenas to Augustus, “Surge tandem carnifex!”

It is accordingly remarkable, in different countries, how often at some particular period of their history there occurred an epidemic of terror of witches, which, as fear is always cruel and credulous, glutted the public with seas of innocent blood; and how uniformly men loathed the gore after having swallowed it, and by a reaction natural to the human mind desired, in prudence, to take away or restrict those laws which had been the source of carnage, in order that their posterity might neither have the will nor the means to enter into similar excesses.