by Mr. Lecky. It is worth noticing, that the
most important defences of the belief in witchcraft, against the growing
scepticism in the latter part of the sixteenth century and in the
seventeenth, were the productions of men who in some departments were
among the foremost thinkers of their time. One of them was Jean Bodin,
the famous writer on government and jurisprudence, whose "Republic,"
Hallam thinks, had an important influence in England, and furnished "a
store of arguments and examples that were not lost on the thoughtful
minds of our countrymen." In some of his views he was original and bold;
for example, he anticipated Montesquieu in attempting to appreciate the
relations of government and climate. Hallam inclines to the opinion that
he was a Jew, and attached Divine authority only to the Old Testament.
But this was enough to furnish him with his chief data for the existence
of witches and for their capital punishment; and in the account of his
"Republic," given by Hallam, there is enough evidence that the sagacity
which often enabled him to make fine use of his learning was also often
entangled in it, to temper our surprise at finding a writer on political
science of whom it could be said that, along with Montesquieu, he was
"the most philosophical of those who had read so deeply, the most learned
of those who had thought so much," in the van of the forlorn hope to
maintain the reality of witchcraft. It should be said that he was
equally confident of the unreality of the Copernican hypothesis, on the
ground that it was contrary to the tenets of the theologians and
philosophers and to common-sense, and therefore subversive of the
foundations of every science. Of his work on witchcraft, Mr. Lecky says:

"The 'Demonomanie des Sorciers' is chiefly an appeal to authority,
which the author deemed on this subject so unanimous and so
conclusive, that it was scarcely possible for any sane man to resist
it. He appealed to the popular belief in all countries, in all ages,
and in all religions. He cited the opinions of an immense multitude
of the greatest writers of pagan antiquity, and of the most
illustrious of the Fathers. He showed how the laws of all nations
recognized the existence of witchcraft; and he collected hundreds of
cases which had been investigated before the tribunals of his own or
of other countries. He relates with the most minute and
circumstantial d