Witchcraft in Old Scots Criminal Law. affectionate homage of mankind. While the stirring history of the Greek people and its noble literature shall continue to have charm and interest for men, the wonderfully chiseled periods of Demosthenes and the simple yet lofty speech of Pericles will be no less immortal than the odes of Pindar or the tragedies of Sophocles or JEschylos. The light that glows upon the pages of Vergil shines with no brighter radiance than is seen in those glorious speeches with which Cicero moved that imperial race that dominated the
WITCHCRAFT
world. The glowing oratory of Edmund Burke will live until sensibility to beauty and the generous love of liberty shall die. And I believe the words of Webster, nobly voicing the possibilities of a mighty nation, as yet only dimly conscious of its destiny, will con tinue to roll upon the ears of men, while the nation he helped to fashion shall endure, or indeed while government, founded upon popular freedom, shall remain an instrument of civilization.
IN OLD SCOTS
THE old Scots criminal law is, in the examples we have given, more or less quaint, but it rises to its greatest height both of tragedy and of absurdity in its treatment of witchcraft. On this point lawyers and ministers were equally in error, and Sir George Mackenzie was quite as bad as the rest. A little consideration, however, will show that there were reasons for the contra diction which seems to exist between great learning and the great ignorance which had faith in witches. We have already noted the cast of mind which ranked Blasphemy and Heresy, because they were crimes against the Divine majesty, in a class above Treason towards an earthly sovereign, which is usually regarded as a crime of especial atrocity. There can be no doubt that this iashion of thought was generally prevalent, and induced feelings of peculiar animosity against those miserable creatures who were said to pay homage to the devil. It was not unnatural that men, who were so jealous for the honor and reverence due to God, should hate with a bitter hatred the professed ser vants of His enemy. Hence arose the vin dictive persecution of witches, not so much because they were a source of danger to the public as because they were traitors towards God of the worst sort. The persecution was horrible, and merits our severe censure, but
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the motives which inspired it were not mere malice and cruelty. The persecutors sought to maintain the Divine authority, although they were really doing their utmost to dis credit the religion they professed. It must not be forgotten that their belief in witch craft was sincere. Sir George Mackenzie was a highly educated man, yet he had no doubt on the subject. "That there are witches," he says, "divines cannot doubt, since the Word of God hath ordained that no witch shall live, nor lawyers in Scotland, see ing our law ordains it to be punished with death." Witches being named in the Bible, the Scots Acts and the Corpus Juris Ciz'ilis— the three greatest sources of law known to him—who could doubt? And yet there were even then doubters, who supported their doubts with arguments. They adduced the significant fact that the alleged witches were mostly silly old women, whose age and sex disposed them to melancholy, and whose melancholy disposed them to madness. Further, they said, the miracles ascribed to those poor creatures were impossible to be done by them, seeing that they were but human, and God alone, the Author of Nature, was able to alter or divert its course. It was, moreover, unjust to punish witches for doing evil by means of charms, unless it could be proved that these charms produced the evil
