In my opinion, in cases of parricide, and where the master of a family is to be devoted to the most dreadful punishment, the sentence ought to be unanimous, inasmuch as the proofs of so unparalleled[4] a crime ought to be proved in such a manner as to satisfy all the world, and the least shadow of a doubt in a case of this nature should be sufficient to make the judge tremble who is about to pass sentence of death. The weakness of our reason, and the insufficiency of our laws, become every day more obvious; but surely there cannot be a greater example of this deficiency than that one single casting vote should be sufficient to condemn a fellow-citizen to be broken alive on the wheel; the Athenians required at least fifty voices, over and above the one-half of the judges, before they would dare to pronounce sentence of death; but to what does all this tend? Why, to what we know, but make very little use of, that the Greeks were wiser and more humane than ourselves. It appeared altogether impossible that John Calas, who was an old man of sixty-eight, and had a long while been troubled with a swelling and weakness in his legs, should have been able by himself to have mastered his son and hanged him, who was a stout young fellow of eight and twenty, and more than commonly robust; therefore he must absolutely have been assisted in this act by his wife, his other son, Peter Calas, Lavaisse, and by the servant-maid, and they had been together the whole night of this fatal adventure. But this supposition is altogether as absurd as the other; for can any one believe that a servant, who was a zealous Catholic, would have permitted those whom she looked on as heretics to murder a young man whom she herself had brought up, for his attachment to a religion to which she herself was devoted; that Lavaisse would have come purposely from Bordeaux to assist in hanging his friend, of whose pretended conversion he knew nothing, or that an affectionate mother would have joined in laying violent hands on her own son? And lastly, how could they all together have been able to strangle a young man stronger than them all, without a long and violent struggle, or without his making such a noise as must have been heard by the whole neighborhood, without repeated blows passing between them, without any marks of violence, or without any of their clothes being in the least soiled or disordered! It was evident that if this murder could in the nature of things have been committed, the accused persons were all of them equally guilty, because they did not quit each other’s company an instant the whole night; but then it was equally evident that they were not guilty, and that the father alone could not be so, and yet, by the sentence of the judges, the father alone was condemned to suffer.