DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

¢ 26.4 tion his whole establishment, numbering 400 buman beings, who were all innocent of any share in the crime. In Rome conger-eels, called Murene, were considered a great delicacy, and were kept in large tanks. Some of them attained a length of seven feet, and were as voracious as sharks. It was thought they fattened best on human flesh, and slaves guilty only of trivial offences were thrown alive into their tanks. Yet in no country were the people so much courted as in Rome, and was mob-rule so powerful. If there was no public opinion to condemn these horrors, it was because the minds of the masses were debased by the idolatrous practices of their religion ; and their morals degraded by the system of slavery which lowered men to the level of the brute, and incapacitated him from having the consciousness of his worth which the religion and freedom of later days have instilled into his mind. From the Middle Ages down to the middle of last century every judicial court had its torture-chamber. James II., before his accession to the throne, presided at the tortures of the Scotch Covenanters. Jeffries ordered an old woman, Mrs. Gaunt, to be burnt alive because she had harboured a rebel, and James II. applauded the act. In Scotland up to within a hundred years ago every Highland chief had an executioner in his train. Gaols up to recent times were centres of disease and immorality, and their