crilege. In
this state of disgrace and agony, two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes
and Alexander of Diospolis, were dragged through the streets of
Constantinople, while their brethren were admonished, by the voice of a
crier, to observe this awful lesson, and not to pollute the sanctity
of their character. Perhaps these prelates were innocent. A sentence of
death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence
of a child or a servant: the guilt of the green faction, of the
rich, and of the enemies of Theodora, was presumed by the judges, and
paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed.
A French philosopher [199] has dared to remark that whatever is secret
must be doubtful, and that our natural horror of vice may be abused as
an engine of tyranny. But the favorable persuasion of the same writer,
that a legislator may confide in the taste and reason of mankind, is
impeached by the unwelcome discovery of the antiquity and extent of the
disease. [200]

[Footnote 197: See the laws of Constantine and his successors against
adultery, sodomy &c., in the Theodosian, (l. ix. tit. vii. leg. 7, l.
xi. tit. xxxvi leg. 1, 4) and Justinian Codes, (l. ix. tit. ix. leg. 30,
31.) These princes speak the language of passion as well as of justice,
and fraudulently ascribe their own severity to the first Caesars.]

[Footnote 198: Justinian, Novel. lxxvii. cxxxiv. cxli. Procopius in
Anecdot. c. 11, 16, with the notes of Alemannus. Theophanes, p. 151.
Cedrenus. p. 688. Zonaras, l. xiv. p. 64.]

[Footnote 199: Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xii. c. 6. That eloquent
philosopher conciliates the rights of liberty and of nature, which
should never be placed in opposition to each other.]

[Footnote 200: For the corruption of Palestine, 2000 years before the
Christian aera, see the history and laws of Moses. Ancient Gaul is
stigmatized by Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. v. p. 356,) China by the
Mahometar and Christian travellers, (Ancient Relations of India and
China, p. 34 translated by Renaudot, and his bitter critic the Pere
Premare, Lettres Edifiantes, tom. xix. p. 435,) and native America by
the Spanish historians, (Garcilasso de la Vega, l. iii. c. 13, Rycaut's
translation; and Dictionnaire de Bayle, tom. iii. p. 88.) I believe,
and hope, that the negroes, in their own country, were exempt from this
moral pestilence.]

The free citizens of Athens and Rome enjoyed, in all criminal cases,
the invaluab