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Individual cases may however involve special
considerations in this connexion. For if the point at
issue is whether torture should be applied, it will
make all the difference who it is who demands or
offers it, who it is that is to be subjected to torture,
against whom the evidence thus sought will tell, and
what is the motive for the demand. If on the other
hand torture has already been applied, it will make
all the difference who was in charge of the proceedings, who was the victim and what the nature of the
torture, whether the confession was credible or consistent, whether the witness stuck to his first statement or changed it under the influence of pain, and
whether he made it at the beginning of the torture
or only after it had continued some time. The
[p. 165]
variety of such questions is as infinite as the variety
of actual cases.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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