Strange, is it not, that the opinions of our patriot fathers should so nearly approach the views of the patriarchs of the Mosaic period, upon the qualifications of the judge, for they too, believed that the courts should be presided over by “able men out of Israel, such as feared God, men of truth, hating covetousness” and when appointed to judge between the alleged rights of the ancient Hebrews, they were admonished by the Great Law Giver: “Ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s.”[63] Right well did Moses warn the ancient judges of the Israelites against the fear of men in the prerogative of the judgment seat, for public sentiment has ever proven variable and the proper and just ideals do not always govern the multitude. We have seen them to-day cry “Hosanna” and to-morrow “Crucify Him.” And since the day when Pilate released Barabas and delivered the Nazarene to the multitude, because it was popular for him to do so, the judge who feared “the face of man” has been deemed unworthy of the trust and dignity of the judgment seat. The millions burned at the stake, during the witchcraft craze, in Europe, were convicted before judges whose independence had not been established by the laws of the realm and they simply followed the expressed will of the multitude in the act of pronouncing judgment.[64] In our own country, during the spread of this delusion, in Salem, Massachusetts, before the courts were presided over by judges appointed for life, there were nineteen innocent persons burned or hanged for witchcraft in less than one year, and of these fourteen were women.[65] In the case of the gentle Rebecca Nurse, hanged on Gallows Hill, on July 19, 1692, after her acquittal by a jury, because the people demanded her blood, and a subservient judiciary bowed in humble submission to the _vox populi_, we find one of the most unjust instances of the “recall of judicial decisions” in the history of any country and one of the grossest travesties upon justice that has been produced.[66] The fear of the recall of judges, in France, during the provisional Republic, following the French Revolution, caused the judges to send a poor weak woman to the guillotine, because she possessed the foibles of her sex and the flower of the aristocracy of the country was sent innocent to their death, because a wrought up multitude demanded their slaughter. Oh, for the glory of an independent judiciary, in such a crisis and what a valuable lesson history affords against the precedents made by public sentiment.