The following dialogue is from The Merchant of Venice, Act III Scene 2:
Bassanio: ...as I am, I live upon the rack.
Portia: Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess
What treason there is mingled with your love.
Bassanio: None but that ugly treason of mistrust,
Which makes me fear th'enjoying of my love. [2 lines cut]
Portia: Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything.
The Merchant of Venice was written around 1596.
That's many decades after the start of the Spanish Inquisition, and even later than the papal inquisition of Medieval time. By the time Merchant was written, people knew a thing or two about torture.
"The rack" was, of course, a torture device.
For over 400 years we have known that torture is not a reliable way to gather true information.
Just one more piece of evidence that any torture we've conducted in recent years was unjustified. Indeed if those allowing it were aware of its ineffectiveness (remember, 1596!), then they were using it for punishment rather than intelligence-gathering. And that, of course, is proscribed, if not clearly legally, then at least ethically and philosophically, by the framers of our Constitution and many who went before them.
So by torturing, we go backwards.