person or through regular tribunals.  Its proceedings, becoming more and more summary and rigorous, daily gave rise to feelings of greater and greater abhorrence.  The common saying over all Germany was, “They first hang you, and afterwards inquire into your innocence.”  On all sides opposition arose against the jurisdiction of the free judges.  Princes, bishops, cities, and citizens, agreed instinctively to counteract this worn-out and degenerate institution.  The struggle was long and tedious.  During the last convulsions of the expiring Holy Vehme, there was more than one sanguinary episode, both on the side of the free judges themselves, as well as on that of their adversaries.  Occasionally the secret tribunal broke out into fresh signs of life, and proclaimed its existence by some terrible execution; and at times, also, its members paid dearly for their acts.  On one occasion, in 1570, fourteen free judges, whom Kaspar Schwitz, Count of Oettingen, caused to be seized, were already tied up in bags, and about to be drowned, when the mob, pitying their fate, asked for and obtained their reprieve.

The death-blow to the Vehmic tribunal was struck by its own hand.  It condenmed summarily, and executed without regular procedure, an inhabitant of Munster, who used to scandalize the town by his profligacy.  He was arrested at night, led to a small wood, where the free judges awaited him, and condemned to death without being allowed an advocate; and, after being refused a respite even of a few hours, that he might make his peace with heaven, he was confessed by a monk, and his head was severed from his body by the executioner on the spot.

[Illustration:  Fig. 333.—­Interior Court of the Palace of the Doges of Venice:  Buildings in which are the Cells and the Leads.—­From Cesare Vecellio.]

Dating from this tragical event, which excited universal indignation, the authority of the free judges gradually declined, and, at last, the institution became almost defunct, and merely confined itself to occasionally adjudicating in simple civil matters.

We must not omit to mention the Council of Ten of Venice when speaking on the subject of arbitrary executions and of tyrannical and implacable justice.  In some respects it was more notorious than the Vehmic tribunal, exercising as it did a no less mysterious power, and inspiring equal terror, though in other countries.

This secret tribunal was created after a revolt which burst on the republic of Venice on the 15th of June, 1310.  At first it was only instituted for two months, but, after various successive prorogations, it was confirmed for five years, on the 31st of January, 1311.  In 1316 it was again appointed for five years; on the 2nd of May, 1327, for ten years more; and at last was established permanently.  In the fifteenth century the authority of the Council of Ten was consolidated and rendered more energetic by the creation of the Inquisitors of State.  These were three in number, elected by the Council of Ten; and the citizens on whom the votes fell could not refuse the functions which were thus spontaneously, and often unexpectedly, assigned to them.  The authority of Inquisitors of State was declared to be “unlimited.”