RACK, an engine of torture, furnished with pulleys, cords, and other means, for extorting confession from criminals. It was known from an early period in the south of Europe, where it was applied to the early Christians, and was in later times an instrument of the Inquisition. The trial
Racz-Keve by rack is unknown to the law of England; though, in 1423, when the dukes of Exeter and Suffolk, and other ministers of Henry VI., had formed a design to introduce the civil law into the kingdom as the rule of government, they erected a rack for torture, which was called in derision the "Duke of Exeter's Daughter," and still remains in the Tower of London, where it was occasionally used as an engine of state, not of law, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. But when, upon the assassination of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by Felton, in 1628, it was proposed in the Privy Council to put the assassin to the rack in order to discover his accomplices, the judges, being consulted, declared unanimously that no such proceeding was allowable by the laws of England. The most fearful piece of torture on record is that of Ravailliac, the murderer of Henri IV. of France. (See RAVAILLIAC.) The Marquis of Beccaria, in an exquisite piece of railing, has proposed this problem:—"The force of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves of an innocent person being given, it is required to find the degree of pain necessary to make him confess himself guilty of a given crime."