Given the current attention to Canada’s extradition treaty
talks with China, and the apparent lack of the rule of law in that country –
including high death penalty rates and claims of torture, it might be salutary
to look at the basis of our own customs by peering into Roman history. Below is an excerpt from Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
written between 1776 and 1788.
Considered one of the greatest works of history ever written, Gibbon writes
about torture in the context of his introductory chapter on Constantinople,
capital city of the Eastern half of the Roman Empire (later known as the
Byzantine Empire) established by Emperor Constantine, who claimed to convert to
Christianity.
The annals of tyranny,
from the reign of Tiberius to that of Domitian, circumstantially relate the
executions of many innocent victims, but as long as the faintest remembrance
was kept alive of the national freedom and honour, the last hours of a Roman
were secured from the danger of ignominious torture. The conduct of provincial magistrates was
not, however, regulated by the practice of the city or the strict maxims of the
civilians. They found the use of torture
established not only among the slaves of oriental despotism but among the
Macedonians, who obeyed a limited monarch; among the Rhodians, who flourished
by the liberty of commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted
and adorned the dignity of humankind. The
acquiescence of the provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or
perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack to extort from
vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they
insensibly proceeded to confound the distinction of rank and to disregard the
privileges of Roman citizens. The
apprehensions of the subjects urged them to solicit, and the interest of the
sovereign encouraged him to grant, a variety of special exemptions which
tacitly allowed, and even authorized, the general use of torture. They protected all persons of illustrious or
honourable rank, bishops and their presbyters, professors of the liberal arts,
soldiers and their families, municipal officers, and their posterity to the
third generation, and all children under the age of puberty. But a fatal maximum was introduced into the
new jurisprudence of the empire that in the case of treason, which included
every offense that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from a hostile
intention towards the prince or republic, all privileges were suspended and all
conditions were reduced to the same ignominious level. As the safety of the emperor was avowedly
preferred to every consideration of justice or humanity, the dignity of age and
the tenderness of youth were alike exposed to the most cruel tortures, and the
terrors of a malicious information which might select them as accomplices, or
even as witnesses, perhaps, of an imaginary crime perpetually hung over the
heads of the principal citizens of the Roman world.
These evils, however terrible they may appear, were confined to the
smaller number of Roman subjects, whose dangerous situation was in some degree
compensated by the enjoyment of those advantages, either of nature or of
fortune, which exposed them to the jealousy of the monarch. The obscure millions of a great empire have
much less to dread from the cruelty than from the avarice of their masters, and
their humble happiness is principally affected by the grievance of excessive
taxes, which, gently pressing on the wealthy, descend with accelerated weight
on the meaner and more indigent classes of society.
A people elated by
pride or soured by discontent are seldom qualified to form a just estimate of
their actual situation. The subjects of
Constantine were incapable of discerning the decline of genius and manly virtue
which so far degraded them below the dignity of their ancestors; but they could
feel and lament the rage of tyranny, the relaxation of discipline, and the
increase of taxes. The impartial
historian who acknowledges the justice of their complaints will observe some
favourable circumstances which tended to alleviate the misery of their
condition. The threatening tempest of
Barbarians which so soon subverted the foundations of Roman greatness was still
repelled, or suspended, on the frontiers.
The arts of luxury and literature were cultivated, and the elegant
pleasures of society were enjoyed, by the inhabitants of a considerable portion
of the globe. The forms, the pomp, and
the expense of the civil administration contributed to restrain the irregular
license of the soldiers; and although the laws were violated by power or
perverted by subtlety, the sage principles of Roman jurisprudence preserved a
sense of order and equity unknown to the despotic governments to the East. The rights of mankind might derive some
protection from religion and philosophy; and the name of freedom, which could
no longer alarm, might sometimes admonish, the successors of Augustus that they
did not reign over a nation of Slaves or Barbarians.
