to a person, concerning others who had spoken against
loan-money, and what arguments they had used, this person was to be
charged in his majesty's name, and upon his allegiance, not to disclose
to any other the answer he had given. A striking instance of that
fatuity of the human mind, when a weak government is trying to do what
it knows not how to perform: it was seeking to obtain a secret purpose
by the most open and general means: a self-destroying principle!

Our ancestors were children in finance; their simplicity has been too
often described as tyranny! but from my soul do I believe, on this
obscure subject of taxation, that old Burleigh's advice to Elizabeth
includes more than all the squabbling pamphlets of our political
economists,--"WIN HEARTS, AND YOU HAVE THEIR HANDS AND PURSES!"

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Cowel's "Interpreter," art. _Acephali_. This by-name we
unexpectedly find in a grave antiquarian law-dictionary! probably
derived from Pliny's description of a people whom some travellers
had reported to have found in this predicament, in their fright and
haste in attempting to land on a hostile shore among savages. To
account for this fabulous people, it has been conjectured they wore
such high coverings, that their heads did not appear above their
shoulders, while their eyes seemed to be placed in their breasts.
How this name came to be introduced into the laws of Henry the First
remains to be told by some profound antiquary; but the allusion was
common in the middle ages. Cowel says, "Those are called _acephali_
who were the _levellers_ of that age, and acknowledged _no head_ or
superior."

[123] _Vocabulario di Santa Caterina e della Lingua Sanese_, 1717.
This pungent lexicon was prohibited at Rome by desire of the court
of Florence. The history of this suppressed work may be found in _Il
Giornale de' Letterati d' Italia_, tomo xxix. 1410. In the last
edition of Haym's "Biblioteca Italiana," 1803, it is said to be
reprinted at _Manilla, nell' Isole Fillippine_!--For the
book-licensers it is a great way to go for it.

[124] Bodin's "Six Books of a Commonwealth," translated by Richard
Knolles, 1606. A work replete with the _practical_ knowledge of
politics, and of which Mr. Dugald Stewart has delivered a high
opinion. Yet this great politician wrote a volume to anathematise
those who doubted the existence of sor