ng, into eternal
darkness, there seemed to our forefathers no surer method of checking
the first tendencies toward intellectual revolt, and saving
innumerable souls, than by delivering the heretic to the flames, and
accompanying his execution by everything calculated to excite popular
derision and execration. The public punishment of treason, and
particularly of attempted or achieved assassination of the sovereign
or head of the State, was made as excruciating and terrible as
possible, in order THAT THE EXAMPLE MIGHT DETER.

We speak somewhat vaguely to-day of such tortures and their
atrociously horrible accompaniments. It may be worth while to see
just what they were. two or three centuries ago civilized nations
considered that IF TORMENT WAS USEFUL IT WAS JUSTIFIABLE. There are
three cases which stand out in history with especial distinctness, the
details of which are little known, and I propose to cite them simply
as evidence of the extent to which judicial torment was carried, but a
little while ago, among some of the most enlightened and progressive
nations of modern times.

If ever the assassination of a Prince deserved the severest
punishment, it was the murder in July, 1584, of William the Silent, the
leader of the Protestants of Holland in their struggle for
independence from Spanish dominion. The sentence pronounced upon the
murderer, Balthazar Gerard, a mere hired assassin, was carried out
within ten days after commission of the crime. A contemporary writer,
apparently an eyewitness of his execution, speaks of Gerard as one
"whose death was not of a sufficient sharpness for such a caitiff, and
yet too sore for any Christian." His description of the murderer'
execution is as follows:

"The order of the torment was four days. He had the first day the
strappado openly, in the market; the second day, whipped and salted,
and his right hand cut off; the third day, his breasts cut out, and
salt thrown in, and then his left hand cut off. The last day of his
torment, which was the 10th of July, he was bound to two stakes,
standing upright, in such order that he could not shrink down nor stir
any way. Thus standing, naked, there was a great fire placed some
small distance from him wherein heated pincers of iron, with which
pincers two men did pinch and pull his flesh in small pieces from his
bones throughout most parts of his body. Then was he unbound from the
stakes and laid upon the earth, and again fa