army of rebels.

This evidence was sufficient to authorise the tearing out the hearts of several people, and dashing them in their faces. But seriously, can two witnesses be thought sufficient to convict a man whom they have a mind to destroy? At least one would imagine they ought not to be notorious villains; neither ought that which they depose to be improbable.

Let us suppose that two of the most upright magistrates in the kingdom were to accuse a man of having conspired with the mufti, to circumcise the whole council of state, the parliament, the archbishop, and the Sorbonne. In vain there two magistrates might swear, that they had sen letters of the mufti: it would naturally be supposed that they were disordered in their heads. It was equally ridiculous to imagine, that the general of the jesuits should raise an army in England, as that the mufti should circumcise the court of France. But unhappily, Titus Oates was believed; that there might remain no specics of atrocious folly which has not entered into the heart of

man.

VOLTAIRE.

Commentary on Beccaria, ch. xv.

IF the crime of high treason be indeterminate, this alone is sufficient to make the government degenerate into arbitrary power.

MONTESQUIEU.

Spirit of Laws, b. xii. cb. vii.

It is also a shocking abuse to give the appelJation of high-treason to an action that does not deserve

deserve it. By an imperial law it was determined, that whoever made an attempt to injure the ministers and officers belonging to the sovereign, should be deemed guilty of high treason, as if he had attempted to injure the sovereign himself. This law was owing to two princes, remarkable for their weakness; princes who were led by their ministers, as flocks by shepherds; princes who were slaves in the palace, children in the council, strangers to the army; princes, in fine, who preserved their authority only by giving it away every day. Some of those favourites conspired against their sovereigns. Nay, they did more, they conspired against the empire; they called in barbarous nations; and when the emperors wanted to stop their progress, the state was so enfeebled, as to be under the necessity of infringing the law, and of exposing itself to the crime of high treason, in order to punish those favourites.

Ib. ch.viii.

THERE was a law passed in England under Henry VIII. by which whoever predicted the king's death was declared guilty of high treason. This law was extremely vague; the terror of despotic power is so great, that it recoils upon those who exercise it. In this king's last illness, the physicians would not venture to say he was in danger, and they surely acted right.

Ib. cb. x.

MARSYAS dreamt that he had cut Dionysius's throat. Dionysius put him to death, pretending

that he would never have dreamt of such a thing by night, if he had not thought of it by day.

Ib. cb. xi.

NOTHING renders the crime of high treason more arbitrary than declaring people guilty of it for indiscreet speeches.

Words do not constitute an overt act; they remain only in idea. When considered by themselves, they have generally no determinate signification; for this depends on the tone in which they are uttered. It often happens, that in re peating the same words, they have not the same meaning; this depends on their connection with other things and sometimes more is signified by silence than by any expression whatever. Since there can be nothing so equivocal and ambiguous as all this; how is it possible to convert it into a crime of high treason? Where this law is established, there is an end not only of liberty, but even of its very shadow.

:

Ib. cb. xii.

In writings there is something more permanent than in words; but when they are no way preparative to high treason, they cannot amount to that charge.

Ib. ch. xiii.

PLOTS,

PLOTS, INFORMERS, AND SPIES.

IN the kingdom of Tribnia, by the natives called Langden, where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people consists in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with se"veral subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the conduct, and pay, of mi nisters of state, and their deputies. The plots in that kingdom are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures; or raise or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best answer their private advantage. It is first agreed, and settled among them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot: then effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meaning of words, syllables, and letters. For instance, they can discover a close-stool to signify

L 4

signify a privy-council; a flock of geese, a senate;
a lame dog, *
an invader; the plague, a standing
army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout,
a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a
chamber-pot, a committee of grandces; a sieve, a
court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap,
an employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a
sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a
broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a
general; a running sore, the administration.

When this method fails, they have others more
effectual, which the learned among them call acros-
tics and anagrams. First, they can decypher all
initial letters into, political meanings. Thus, N,
shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a
fleet at sea: or, Secondly, by transposing the let-
ters of the alphabet, in any suspected paper, they
can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented
party. So, for example, if I should say in a letter
to a friend, Our brother Tom has just got the pilest;
a skilful decypherer would discover, that the same
letters, which compose that sentence, inay be ana-
lysed into the following words: Resista plot is
brought home-the tour.
And this is the anagra
matic method.

Swirt.

Gulliver's Travels, part iii. cb. vi.

THERE is a story in Pausanias of a plot for betraying a city, discovered by the braying of an ass the cackling of geese saved the capitol; and Cataline's

* See the proceedings against Bishop Atterbury, State

Trials, vol. vi.