Iconic authors
Themes
Bibliography of the day
Brute or Fellow Sufferer, the Cabman in the Long Quarrel over the Cab Horse
Was the man who whipped the cab horse a brute to be jailed or a hired hand in a cruel trade? Reformers mostly chose the courtroom. The motor car ended the scene without ever answering the question.
Refuted as Proof, Kept as Intelligence, the Long Life of Torture as an Engine of State
The Enlightenment showed that pain proves nothing. But torture never lived only as proof: from Roman treason trials to Tudor plots to memoranda on actionable intelligence, it served the state's hunt for confederates, and there the refutation never quite reached.
