Conjurers may justly be accounted disturbers of the public peace; and such undoubtedly they are, most effectually, by unsettling the minds of credulous people, murdering sleep, and, occasionally, as in repeated instances, during the progress of the present delusion, by driving their infatuated victims to despair, insanity, and suicide. Severe laws have often been enacted, against these pestilent impostors. Conjuration was made felony by statute 1, James I., 1603. This was repealed by 9 Geo. II., 1763. This repeal was in keeping with the ascendancy of common sense, which decreed, that all conjuration was an absurdity: but, at the same time, all _pretensions_ to exercise this or any similar art was made punishable, as a misdemeanor. All laws, against witchcraft and sorcery, founded on the presumption of their possibility, are now justly accounted cruel and absurd. Laws, for the punishment of such, as disturb the public repose, by pretending to exercise these unnatural agencies, are no less judicious; though they have not always been effectual, against the prejudices of the people. The _Genethliaci_, who erected their horoscopes in Rome, for the purpose of foretelling future events, by judicial astrology, were expelled, by a formal decree of the senate; yet they long retained their hold, upon the affections of a credulous people. This species of divination, by the heavenly bodies, commenced with the Chaldeans, and, from them, passed to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Henault informs us, that it was much in vogue, in France, during the days of Catherine de Medicis. Roger Bacon was greatly devoted to the practice of Judicial Astrology. Cecil, Lord Burleigh, is known, gravely and elaborately to have calculated the nativity of Queen Elizabeth, who was feverishly addicted to magic. The judicial astrologers of the middle ages were a formidable body, and their conjuring cups and glasses were in high esteem. In Sweden, judicial astrology was in the greatest favor, with kings and commoners. A particular influence was ascribed to the conjuring cup of Erricus, king of Sweden. The Swedes firmly believed, that Herlicius, their famous astrologer, had truly predicted the death of the monarch, Gustavus Adolphus, in 1632, at the battle of Lutzengen, or Lippstadt. In the reigns of Henry III. and Henry IV. of France, this absurd delusion was in such repute, that judicial astrologers were consulted, upon the most trivial occasions; and their daily predictions were the theme of grave and constant conversation, with every class of society. It was no uncommon thing, even in England, for those, who were desirous of communicating with the dead, to make a previous arrangement with some favorite astrologer, and _bespeak a spirit_, as we bespeak a coach, for some particular hour.