Among the order of the white penitentiaries there were fome magiftrates of juftice; the death of John Calas feemed then inevitable.

But what more particularly haned his fate, was the approach of that fingular feftival, which, as I have already obferved, the Touloufians celebrate every year, in commemoration. of the maffacre of four thoufand Hugonots; the year 1762, happenened to be the annum feculare of this execrable deed. The inhabitants were bufied in making preparations for the folemnity; this circumftance added fresh fuel to the heated imagination of the populace : every one cried out, that a fcaffold for executing the Calas family upon, would be one of the greatest ornaments of the ceremony; and that heaven itself feemed to have brought them thither as victims, to be facrificed to our holy religion. Twenty perfons were ear witneffes to thefe fpeeches, and to others ftill more outrageous. And this, in the present age! this at a time when philofophy has made so great a progrefs! and while the pens of an hundred academies are employed in inculcating humanity and gentleness of manners! It fhould feem, that enthufiafm, enraged at the late

fuc

success of reason, fought under her standard with redoubled fury.

Thirteen judges met every day, to try this caufe: they had not, they could not, have any proof against this unhappy family; but mistaken zeal held the place of proofs. Six of the judges continued a long time obstinate, being refolved to fentence John Calas, his fʊn, and Lavaiffe, to be broke upon the wheel, and his wife to be burnt at the ftake; the other feven judges, rather more moderate, were at leaft for having the accufed examined; the debates were frequent and long. One of the judges, convinced in his mind of the innocence of the parties, and of the impoffibility of the crime laid to their charge, fpoke warmly in their favour; he opposed the zeal of humanity to that of cruelty, and openly pleaded the caufe of the Calas family in all the houses of Toulouse where mifguided religion demanded with inceffant cries the blood of thefe unfortunate wretches. Another judge, well known for his violence and feverity, went about the town, raving with as much fury against the accufed, as his brother had been earneft in defending them. In fhort, the conteft became fo warm, that both

were obliged to enter protests against each other's proceedings, and retire into the country.

But by a strange fatality, the judge who had been on the favourable fide, had the delicacy to perfift in his exceptions, and the other returned back to give his vote against those on whom he could no longer fit as judge; and it was his fingle vote which carried the fentence of being broke upon the wheel against them, there being eight voices against five, one of the fix merciful judges being at laft, after much conteftation, brought over to the rigorous fide.

In my opinion, in cafes of parricide, and where the master of a family is to be devoted to the most dreadful punishment, the fentence ought to be unanimous; inafmuch, as the proofs of fo unparalleled of a crime, ought to be

*

* I know of but two inftances in hiftory of fathers having murdered their children on the fcore of religion; the firft is the father of St. Barbara, as fhe is called; it feems he had ordered two windows to be made in his bathing-room. St. Barbara in his abfence, took it into her head to make a third in honour of the holy trinity: she also with the end

of

proved, in fuch a manner, as to fatisfy all the world; and the leaft fhadow of a doubt in a cafe of this nature, fhould be fufficient to make. the judge tremble, who is about to pafs fentence of death. The weakness of our reason, and the infufficiency of our laws, become every day more obvious; but furely, there cannot be a

:

of her finger made the fign of the crofs upon the marble pillars; which remained deeply impreffed. thereon her father, in a violent fury to have his room thus marked, runs after her with his fword in his hand with an intention to kill her ; fhe flies towards a mountain, which very complaifantly opens upon her approach to give her a paflage. Her father finds himself obliged to go round about, and at length gets hold of his fugitive daughter, whom he strips and prepares to fcourge; but God envelopes her with a white cloud; however, after all, her father caufed her head to be ftruck off. This is the story, as we find it related in the book called, The Flower of Saints.

The second inftance is of prince Hermenegildus who raised a rebellion against the king his father, and gave him battle in the year 584, but was himfelf defeated and flain by one of his father's generals however, he has been placed among the martyrs, because his father was an Arian.

greater

greater example of this deficiency, than that one fingle cafting vote fhould be fufficient to condemn a fellow citizen to be broke alive upon the wheel: the Athenians required at least fifty voices, over and above the one half of the judges, before they would dare to pronounce fentence of death; but to what does all this tend? Why to what we know, but make very little ufe of, that the Greeks were wiser and more humane than ourfelves.

It appeared altogether impoffible that John Calas, who was an old man of fixty-eight, and had a long while been troubled with a fwelling and weakness in his legs, fhould have been able by himfelf to have mastered his fon and hanged him, who was a flout young fellow of eight and twenty, and more than commonly robuft; therefore he muft abfolutely have been affifted in this act by his wife, his other fon Peter Calas, Lavaiffe, and by the fervant maid, and they had been together the whole night of this fatal adventure. But this fuppofition is altogether as abfurd as the other; for can any one believe, that a fervant, who was a zealous catholic, would have permitted those whom he looked upon as heretics, to murder a young man whom she herfelf had brought up, for his attachment to a re