Henry Charles Lea
Henry Charles Lea (September 19, 1825 – October 24, 1909) was an American publisher, civic activist, philanthropist and historian from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Quotes
[edit]Superstition and Force (1866)
[edit]- Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea
- The whole process [the Inquisition] was apparently based upon the conviction that it was better that a hundred innocent persons should suffer than that one culprit should escape, and it would not be easy to devise a course of procedure better fitted to render the use of torture universal.
- Superstition and Force (Philadelphia, 1866), IV. "Torture", p. 350
- Witchcraft was considered as peculiarly difficult of proof, and torture consequently became an unfailing resource to the puzzled tribunal, although every legal safeguard was refused to the wretched criminal, and the widest latitude of evidence was allowed. Bodin expressly declares that in so fearful a crime no rules of procedure were to be observed. Sons were admitted to testify against their fathers, and young girls were regarded as the best of witnesses against their mothers; the disrepute of a witness was no bar to the reception of his testimony, and even children of irresponsible age were allowed to swear before they rightly knew the nature of the oath on which hung the life of a fellow creature.
- Superstition and Force, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1870), IV. "Torture", p. 430
External links
[edit]
Encyclopedic article on Henry Charles Lea on Wikipedia
Categories:
- Wikiquote stubs
- 1825 births
- 1909 deaths
- Historians from the United States
- People from Philadelphia
- Publishers from the United States
- Social activists
- Poets from the United States
- Philanthropists from the United States
- Harvard University alumni
- University of Pennsylvania alumni
- Members of the American Philosophical Society