In England the use of torture has never been conformable either to common or to statute law; but how often has it been practised by a corrupt administration and wicked judges! In 1549 Lord Seymour of Sudley, Admiral of England, was put to the torture;[51] in 1604 Guy Fawkes was "horribly racked."[52] Peacham was repeatedly put to torture as you have just now heard, and that in the presence of Lord Bacon himself in 1614.[53] Peacock was racked in 1620, Bacon and Coke both signing the warrant for this illegal wickedness,--"he deserveth it as well as Peacham did," said the Lord Chancellor, making his own "ungodly custom" stand for law.[54] In 1627 the Lord Deputy of Ireland wanted to torture two priests, and Charles I. gave him license, the privy council consenting--"all of one mind that he might rack the priests if he saw fit, and hang them if he found reason!"[55] In 1628 the judges of England solemnly decided that torture was unlawful; but it had always been so,--and Yelverton, one of the judges, was a member of the commission which stretched Peacham on the rack.[56] Yet, spite of this decision, torture still held its old place, and a warrant from the year 1610 still exists for inflicting this illegal atrocity on a victim of the court.[57] Yet even so late as 1804, when Thomas Pictou, governor of Trinidad, put a woman to tortures of the most cruel character, by the connivance of the court he entirely escaped from all judicial punishment.[58] Yes, torture was long continued in England itself, though not always by means of thumbscrews and Scottish boots and Spanish racks; the monstrous chains, the damp cells, the perpetual irritation which corrupt servants of a despotic court tormented their victims withal, was the old demon under another name.[59] Nay, within a few months the newspapers furnish us with examples of Americans being put to the torture of the lash to force a confession of their alleged crime--and this has been done by the power which this court has long been so zealous to support--the Slave Power of America. [Footnote 51: See 2 St. Tr. 774, note.] [Footnote 52: 1 Jardine, Crim. Tr. 16.] [Footnote 53: 2 St. Tr. 871.] [Footnote 54: 1 Jardine, 19.] [Footnote 55: Ibid.] [Footnote 56: 3 St. Tr. 371. See 30 St. Tr. 892.] [Footnote 57: 1 Jardine, 20. See Emlyn, Preface to St. Tr. in 1 Hargrave, p. iii.] [Footnote 58: 30 St. Tr. 225.] [Footnote 59: See case of Huggins in 17 St. Tr. 297, 309.] It has been well said:--