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_ BOOK XI. FRIEDRICH TAKES THE REINS IN HAND. JUN.-DEC., 1740
(Chapter I cont.)
ABOLITION OF LEGAL TORTURE
Friedrich makes haste, next, to strike into Law-improvements. It is but the morrow after this of the Corn-magazines, by KABINETS-ORDRE (Act of Parliament such as they can have in that Country, where the Three Estates sit all under one Three-cornered Hat, and the debates are kept silent, and only the upshot of them, more or less faithfully, is made public),--by Cabinet Order, 3d June, 1740, he abolishes the use of Torture in Criminal Trials. [Preuss, Friedrichs Jugend und Thronbesteigung (Berlin, 1840,--a minor Book of Preuss's), p. 340. Rodenbeck, i. 14 ("3d June").] Legal Torture, "Question" as they mildly call it, is at an end from this date. Not in any Prussian Court shall a "question" try for answer again by that savage method. The use of Torture had, I believe, fallen rather obsolete in Prussia; but now the very threat of it shall vanish,--the threat of it, as we may remember, had reached Friedrich himself, at one time. Three or four years ago, it is farther said, a dark murder happened in Berlin: Man killed one night in the open streets; murderer discoverable by no method,--unless he were a certain CANDIDATUS of Divinity to whom some trace of evidence pointed, but who sorrowfully persisted in absolute and total denial. This poor Candidatus had been threatened with the rack; and would most likely have at length got it, had not the real murderer been discovered,--much to the discredit of the rack in Berlin. This Candidatus was only threatened; nor do I know when the last actual instance in Prussia was; but in enlightened France, and most other countries, there was as yet no scruple upon it. Barbier, the Diarist at Paris, some time after this, tells us of a gang of thieves there, who were regularly put to the torture; and "they blabbed too, ILS ONT JASE," says Barbier with official jocosity. [Barbier, Journal Historique du Regne de Louis XV. (Paris, 1849), ii. 338 (date "Dec. 1742").]
Friedrich's Cabinet Order, we need not say, was greeted everywhere, at home and abroad, by three rounds of applause;--in which surely all of us still join; though the PER CONTRA also is becoming visible to some of us, and our enthusiasm grows less complete than formerly. This was Friedrich's first step in Law-Reform, done on his fourth day of Kingship. A long career in that kind lies ahead of him; in reform of Law, civil as well as criminal, his efforts ended with life only. For his love of Justice was really great; and the mendacities and wiggeries, attached to such a necessary of life as Law, found no favor from him at any time. _
Read next: Book 11. Friedrich Takes The Reins In Hand. Jun.-Dec., 1740: __ Will Have Philosophers About Him, And A Real Academy Of Sciences
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