at a printed copy of such a treatise might be
deposited in every court, to be consulted by the jurymen before they
consider of their verdict; by which abundance of inconveniences would be
avoided, whereof innumerable instances might be produced from former
times, because I will say nothing of the present.

I have read somewhere of an eastern king who put a judge to death for an
iniquitous sentence, and ordered his hide to be stuffed into a cushion,
and placed upon the tribunal for the son to sit on, who was preferred to
his father's office. I fancy such a memorial might not have been
unuseful to a son of Sir William Scroggs, and that both he and his
successors would often wriggle in their seats as long as the cushion
lasted. I wish the relater had told us what number of such cushions
there might be in that country.

I cannot but observe to your lordship how nice and dangerous a point it
is grown for a private person to inform the people even in an affair
where the public interest and safety are so highly concerned as that of
Mr. Wood, and this in a country where loyalty is woven into the very
hearts of the people, seems a little extraordinary. Sir William Scroggs
was the first who introduced that commendable acuteness into the courts
of judicature; but how far this practice hath been imitated by his
successors or strained upon occasion, is out of my knowledge. When
pamphlets unpleasing to the ministry were presented as libels, he would
order the offensive paragraphs to be read before him, and said it was
strange that the judges and lawyers of the King's Bench should be duller
than all the people of England; and he was often so very happy in
applying the initial letters of names, and expounding dubious hints (the
two common expedients among writers of that class for escaping the law)
that he discovered much more than ever the authors intended, as many of
them or their printers found to their cost. If such methods are to be
followed in examining what I have already written or may write hereafter
upon the subject of Mr. Wood, I defy any man of fifty times my
understanding and caution to avoid being entrapped, unless he will be
content to write what none will read, by repeating over the old
arguments and computations, whereof the world is already grown weary. So
that my good friend Harding lies under this dilemma, either to let my
learned works hang for ever a drying upon his lines, or venture to
publish them at the hazard