The Peril of the Republic of the United States of America - Percy T. Magan

force a confession of his guilt, he was so far from
being considered as having established his
innocence that, with a barbarity unknown to any
tribunal where torture has been admitted, and
which of itself proves its utter incompetency to the
end it proposes, he was not unfrequently convicted
on the depositions of the witnesses. At the
conclusion of his mock trial, the prisoner was again
returned to his dungeon, where, without the blaze
of a single faggot to dispel the cold or illuminate
the darkness of the long winter night, he was left in
unbroken silence to await the doom which was to
consign him to an ignominious death, or a life
scarcely less ignominious.”[9]
To add to the discomfiture of the victims, the
three men who sat as judges in the inquisitorial
courts were almost invariably chosen from the
most ignorant. Says Puighblanch:--
“Even the common people, amidst the illusion
in which they lived under the yoke of this tribunal,
at length became sensible of the great ignorance
which prevailed in its dark conclaves. This is
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