Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/124

 io8 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 63. strong, no gratitude too vehement that we have left them, with stake and wheel, and red-hot pincers and the ferocious refinements of another age, long and for ever behind us. But there is a common level of humanity among contemporary civilized nations, from which there is seldom any large deviation for good or evil ; and Protestant England, notwithstanding the cruel- ties to the Jesuits, was not below but above the average continental level. The torture chambers of the Inqui- sition were yet more horrible than the cells of the Tower, and the use of torture in England, though forbidden by the law, was inherited by the council, through a long series of precedents. Protestant prisoners had been racked by Mary, as Catholics were racked by Elizabeth. We condemn Burghley and Walsingham, not because they were worse than Pole and Gardiner, but because they were not better, while the atrocious sentence for treason was repeated for two more centuries from the bench whenever rebel or conspirator was brought up for justice. The guilt of judicial cruelty to criminals must be distributed equally over the whole contemporary world. The mere execution of these Jesuits, if political executions can be defended at all, was as justifiable as that of the meanest villain or wildest enthusiast who ever died upon the scaffold. Treason is a crime for which personal virtue is neither protection nor excuse. To plead in condemnation of severity, either the general innocence or the saintly intentions of the sufferers, is beside the issue ; and if it be lawful in defence of national independence to kill open enemies in war, it is more