is country from
France, and beginning to condole with his countrymen on the terrible
_defeat_ they had sustained, was infinitely astonished to learn that
the battle of Trafalgar was a splendid victory. He had been assured,
he said, that in that battle the English had been totally defeated;
and the French were fully and universally persuaded that such was the
fact. Now if this report of the belief of the French nation was _not_
true, the British Public were completely imposed upon; if it _were_
true, then both nations were, at the same time, rejoicing in the event
of the same battle, as a signal victory to themselves; and
consequently one or other, at least, of these nations must have been
the dupes of their government: for if the battle was never fought at
all, or was not decisive on either side, in that case _both_ parties
were deceived. This instance, I conceive, is absolutely demonstrative
of the point in question.

"But what shall we say to the testimony of those many respectable
persons who went to Plymouth on purpose, and saw Buonaparte with their
own eyes? must they not trust their senses?" I would not disparage
either the eyesight or the veracity of these gentlemen. I am ready to
allow that they went to Plymouth for the purpose of seeing Buonaparte;
nay, more, that they actually rowed out into the harbour in a boat,
and came alongside of a man-of-war, on whose deck they saw a man in a
cocked hat, who, _they were told_, was Buonaparte. This is the utmost
point to which their testimony goes; how they ascertained that this
man in the cocked hat had gone through all the marvellous and romantic
adventures with which we have so long been amused, we are not told.
Did they perceive in his physiognomy, his true name, and authentic
history? Truly this evidence is such as country people give one for a
story of apparitions; if you discover any signs of incredulity, they
triumphantly show the very house which the ghost haunted, the
identical dark corner where it used to vanish, and perhaps even the
tombstone of the person whose death it foretold. Jack Cade's nobility
was supported by the same irresistible kind of evidence: having
asserted that the eldest son of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was
stolen by a beggar-woman, "became a bricklayer when he came to age,"
and was the father of the supposed Jack Cade; one of his companions
confirms the story, by saying, "Sir, he made a chimney in my father's
house, and the bricks ar