II


REBELLION

For certain crimes mankind has ordained penalties of exceptional
severity, in order to emphasise a general abhorrence. In Rome, for
example, a parricide, or the murderer of any near relation, was thrown
into deep water, tied up in a sack together with a dog, a cock, a viper,
and a monkey, which were probably symbols of his wickedness, and must
have given him a lively time before death supervened. Similarly, the
English law, always so careful of domestic sanctitude in women, provided
that a wife who killed her husband should be dragged by a horse to the
place of execution and burnt alive. We need not recall the penalties
considered most suitable for the crime of religious difference--the
rack, the fire, the boiling oil, the tearing pincers, the embrace of the
spiky virgin, the sharpened edge of stone on which the doubter sat, with
increasing weights tied to his feet, until his opinions upon heavenly
mysteries should improve under the stress of pain. When we come to
rebellion, the ordinance of English law was more express. In the case of
a woman, the penalty was the same as for killing her husband--that crime
being defined as "petty treason," since the husband is to her the sacred
emblem of God and King. So a woman rebel was burnt alive as she stood,
head, quarters, and all. But male rebels were specially treated, as may
be seen from the sentence passed upon them until the reign of George
III.[1] These were the words that Judge Jeffreys and Scroggs, for
instance, used to roll out with enjoyable eloquence upon the dazed