id not inspire him with any horror. No
punishment, however atrocious, seemed to him too great for persons
clearly guilty of enormous crimes. I have already referred to his
defence of the horrible Boiling Act which disgraced the reign and the
parliament of Henry VIII. The account of Mary Stuart's old and
wizened face as it appeared when her false hair and front had been
removed after her execution may be set down as an error of taste. But
what is to be said, on the score of humanity, for an historian who in
the nineteenth century calmly and in cold blood defended the use of
the rack? Even here Freeman's ingenuity of suggestion did not desert
him. After quoting part, and part only, of Froude's sinister apology,
he writes, "To all this the answer is very simple. Every time that
Elizabeth and her counsellors sent a prisoner to the rack they
committed a breach of the law of England."+ Any one who read this
article without reading the History would infer that Froude had
maintained the legality, as well as the expediency, of torture. That
is not true. What Froude says is, "A practice which by the law was
always forbidden could be palliated only by a danger so great that
the nation had become like an army in the field. It was repudiated on
the return of calmer times, and the employment of it rests a stain on
the memory of those by whom it was used. It is none the less certain,
however, that the danger was real and terrible, and the same causes
which relieve a commander in active service from the restraints of
the common law apply to the conduct of statesmen who are dealing with
organised treason. The law is made for the nation, not the nation for
the law. Those who transgress it do it at their own risk, but they
may plead circumstances at the bar of history, and have a right to be
heard." Thus Froude asserts as strongly and clearly as Freeman
himself that torture was in 1580, and always had been, contrary to
the law of England. On the purely legal and technical aspect of the
question a point might be raised which neither Froude nor Freeman has
attempted to solve. Would any Court in the reign of Elizabeth have
convicted a man of a criminal offence for carrying out the express
commands of the sovereign? If not, in what sense was the racking of
the Jesuits illegal? But there is a law of God, as well as a law of
man, and surely Elizabeth broke it. Froude's argument seems to prove
too much, if it proves anything, for it would justif