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Among the errors of the past we find the "rack," the "thumb-screw," the "inquisition" I was going to add the cross, but I recollect that unbelievers do not put that in their list. They do not sympathize with Christ, so they leave the cross out; in fact they do not like to talk about it. "It is their stumbling stone; the rock of their offense."
Probably my sub-conscious self or astral body was there, hearing every word they said. Anyhow, I knew. And I could do nothing. A thumb-screw or a rack would have been a pleasant relief. Suddenly we heard the sound of a carriage driving quickly up to the house. "Who can that be?" wondered Mrs. Norton. "It's after half-past nine." "Very likely it's Mr.
Then Tim came! and as I looked at the long settee where Luther was droning on and on through the story of Sister Flora, where Perry Thomas seemed to sit beneath the judgment seat, where Weston shifted wearily to and fro, where Tim was suffering the tortures of the thumb-screw, I cried to my inmost self, "Verily, Brother Matthias, thou art a mighty joker!" It took a long time to kill that tiger.
Joseph M'Cormick, D.D. who has written his life, and detailed an account of his fortitude and sufferings in the cause of liberty, says, "that all his objections and remonstrances being over-ruled by the majority of the privy counsel, the public executioner was called upon to perform his inhuman office. A thumb-screw had been prepared on purpose, of a peculiar construction.
I saw here the thumb-screw two little innocent looking pieces of iron, armed on the inner surface with protuberances to prevent their slipping and when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or maybe said, "I do not believe that the whale ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning," then they put these pieces of iron upon his thumb, and there was a screw at each end, and then, in the name of love and forgiveness, they began screwing these pieces of iron together.
Therefore, inhuman tortures will be inflicted on prisoners. The rack and thumb-screw will be used to extract secrets. Men will be immured alive within narrow walls and allowed to perish by inches. The Austrian prisons in the northern Italian provinces will be so constructed that the miserable victim can neither sit nor lie down nor see the light of day.
For what was the inference from it, but that they did not leave their own country willingly; that, when they were in the holds of the slave-vessels, they were not in the Elysium which had been represented; and that there was a fear either that they would make their escape, or punish their oppressors? I bought also a thumb-screw at this shop.
We do not mutilate our criminals or scalp them for the preservation of their souls, and we have lost confidence in the rack and the thumb-screw. But we need only transport ourselves to other lands and study other people's views of judicial necessities, and we shall find that the punitive systems of the thirteenth or the eighteenth centuries are still with us.
The illegal modes of "putting the question," i.e., of extorting a confession of guilt, as commonly practised are, prolonged kneeling on coarse sand, with the brow within an inch of the ground; twisting the ears with "roughened fingers," and keeping them twisted while the prisoner kneels on chains; beating the lips to a jelly with a thick stick, the result of which was to be seen in several cases in the prison; suspending the body by the thumbs; tying the hands to a bar under the knees, so as to bend the body double during many hours; the thumb-screw; dislocating the arm or shoulder; kneeling upon pounded glass, salt and sand mixed together, till the knees are excoriated, and several others, the product of fiendish ingenuity.
No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, the boot and wedge, or other enginery of torture, soon supplied that defect, and, innocent or guilty, he accused himself! Notwithstanding all this power, the Inquisition failed of its purpose. When the heretic could no longer confront it, he evaded it.
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