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The Vehmgerichte.

135

When capital punishment was inflicted, it solemn oaths bound every one to secrecy as to the proceedings; and there is no evidence was customary to leave a knife by the body, that these vows were ever broken, although to show that the act was not one of a private it is supposed that at one time one hundred murderer, but was due to the sentence of the thousand persons were members of these Vehmgerichte. The "wild kind of justice" societies. For the determination of civil of these irregular courts was long a terror to disputes, the meetings of the tribunals were evil-doers; and as the tribunals were coun held in a public place and in the full light of tenanced by the highest powers in the land, day; but such offences as robbery and those obeying their decrees were independent murder were usually dealt with secretly. If of the regular authorities, while the large common rumor ascribed the commission of a number of the members and their wide dis crime to any person, or if a charge were persion rendered any sentence passed almost brought against him, he was cited to answer certain of execution. Such rude administration of justice is, the accusation before the court of his district. The summons bore the seal of the Vehm- however, peculiarly liable to abuse, and in gerichte, and was generally fastened to the course of time the inevitable deterioration door of the supposed criminal during the set in. A Diet of the Empire was held at night. If he refused to attend, the citation Trier in 1512, when it was declared that "by was repeated; and disobedience to the the Westphalian tribunals many an honest second summons was considered as con man had lost his life, honor, body, and prop clusive evidence of guilt. The members of erty; " and even the Archbishop of Cologne, the tribunal were bound by their oaths to their nominal chief officer, admitted that " by put such an individual to death wherever very many they were shunned and regarded they could find him. If, on the contrary, he as seminaries of villains." As the power of attended the court, he was allowed to call the State gradually consolidated, the irregu witnesses, and to clear himself, if he could, lar courts were suppressed, although they by their evidence. Upon his failing to prove were never abolished by any formal enact his innocence, he was punished, according to ment; and it is said that the last remnant of the nature of his crime, by fine or summary the old tribunals was found in operation in execution. No one was exempt by virtue of Westphalia when Jerome Bonaparte was king his rank, and the highest noble was as liable of that country, in the early part of the to citation as the poorest peasant in the land. present century. — Chambers Journal.