This part of the law alone is more worthy of the Spanish Inquisition than of this free country. There never was a law so calculated at every point to be the vehicle of persecution; and this iniquitous procedure is calculated to break the spirit of any woman. Such a law, such a mode of punishment—close imprisonment for life, with the constantly presented alternative of a brutal personal violation—such a punishment would be bad enough if following after the most regular, constitutional, and careful trial and conviction. But what, in God’s name, are we to think of it when it follows on a conviction such as I have already described? That these consequences may not be likely to happen is no satisfactory answer; that it should be possible for them to happen under the laws of England is itself sufficiently intolerable. The whole treatment of the women who are brought under the operation of these Acts has the general character of those inquisitorial proceedings in the dark ages, which are condemned by all, and the very record of which is scarcely now permitted to be revived in any publication. There are cases of the ancient “peines fortes et dures,” which certainly did not involve bodily pain, which latter was often preferred by the victims when a choice was given. The inquisitors knew that to wound the emotional part of a woman’s nature was oftentimes greater torture than actual laceration.[69] In concluding this chapter, I cannot avoid this opportunity of saying, that although we have been as yet objecting to these Acts on account chiefly of the innocent, or comparatively innocent, yet we must strongly assert that, in the application of them to the most deeply guilty of the class of women who come under their operation, they are equally dangerous and reprehensible. For this reason, that the essential danger, which we have all along pointed out, lies in the infringement in any case whatsoever of our ancient mode of justice—an element of license introduced into our criminal code being the first step towards the extinction of liberty for all. When Parliament ventured in the last century to infringe upon the principles of our constitution, in the case of Mr. Wilkes,[70] Lord Chatham, in deprecating their action, spoke the following words: “The character of Mr. Wilkes has very improperly been introduced into this question; for my own part, I consider him merely and indifferently as an English subject, possessed of certain rights which the laws have given him. In _his_ person, though he were the _worst_ of men, _I contend for the safety and security of the best; and God forbid, my Lords, that there should ever be a power in this country of measuring the civil rights of the subject by his moral character, or by any other rule than the fixed law of the land_.”