Page:Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1775).djvu/224

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firmed, and he was executed without mercy.

Such deeds are enough to make a man’s hair bristle with horror. Yet where is the country that hath not beheld such shocking spectacles? Mankind universally forget that they are brothers, and persecute each other even to death. Let us console ourselves with the hope, that such dreadful times are passed, never more to return.


CHAPTER IX.

Of Witches.

IN the year 1748, in the bishoprick of Wurtsburg, an old woman was convicted of witchcraft and burnt. This was an extraordinary phenomenon in the present century. But how incredible it seems, that a people, who boasted of their reformation, and of having trampled superstition under their feet, and who flattered themselves that they had brought their reason to