law or of equity, be held to be sufficiently fulfilled. The prediction that " none of woman born shall harm Macbeth," is a plain guarantee against injury, if not from any individual whatever, at least from any son of a woman. We demur entirely to the doctrine that a child brought into the world by the Cæsarean operation is not born of his mother; and have a strong notion that Macduff would not have been so ready to disclaim his being so "born," if the question had arisen as to his right to take the Thanedom of Fife, under a destination to Margaret Macduff his mother, and the eldest son lawfully born of her body. It is pretty plain that no court of law would have sustained any objection to his right of inheritance, in respect of the mere manner of his birth; and I doubt whether any practitioner at or around the bar, would be got to advance the plea. As the matter turned out, it seems perfectly clear that Macbeth or his representatives had a good action against the witches for deceit. The same may be said of the other security which was offered, that Macbeth should not be defeated "until great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him." Nothing can be more untenable than the attempted mode of evading this solemn assurance, by the mere marching of Malcolm's men with each a green bough before him. The merest tyro in an attorney's office, would see that the separation of the branches from the trees entirely destroyed their character as a wood. From that moment those branches ceased to be any part of the real estate, and would have belonged to the executors as personalty. On the whole, it is manifest that Macbeth was a most ill-used individual, and might well exclaim :

"And be these juggling fiends no more believed,

That palter with us in a double sense ; That keep the word of promise to our ear, And break it to our hope."

He would have been differently treated if he had been dealing with the legal profession.

I return now to the subject of bargains or contracts, with which I began, and from which a reference to Virgil has led me away. I shall here give a few instances of verbal evasion, from a class of men, who of all others may

be considered to have the least community of feeling with the vocation to which I belong. I mean the military, who generally, as far as I can dis. cover, affect to hold us in great contempt, and towards whom there is a pretty tolerable, though often a suppressed feeling of hearty detestation on our side. At least for myself I can say that I am never in company with these scarlet-robed gentlemen, particularly in the presence of ladies, without a most uncomfortable feeling of indignation, at witnessing their easy and successfulimpudence, and a strong wish, if prudence permitted, to transfix them on the point of their own breadtoasters. Considering, therefore, the little love that is thus lost between us, I think I cannot more effectually vin. dicate the men of law from the charge of a peculiar tendency to equivocation, than by showing the prevalence of that passion among those whose business it is to fight with more substantial weapons. I take my instances here chiefly from remoter scenes of history, as in later times the legal labours of Grotius and Puffendorff have been the means of introducing better faith into military transactions. Most of the instances are so flagrantly hostile both to law and to justice, that I shall give them without any comment. Excuse me, if they are not arranged in proper chronological order.

Cleomenes the Spartan, having made an armistice with the Argive army for seven days, fell upon them during the third night, and killed and captured a great number of them while they were fast asleep, in reliance on the truce. When reproached with his perfidy, he urged in his justification, that he had made a truce for seven days, but had not agreed for the nights also.

Temures promised the garrison of Sebastia, that, if they would surrender, no blood should be shed. The garrison surrendered, and Temures buried them all alive.

A promise to deliver prisoners, says a lawyer, implies that they shall be delivered living; not that they shall be first put to death, and then delivered, as was once done by the Platæans.

Labeo, the Roman general, having overcome Antiochus, stipulated as a condition of peace, that he should be entitled to carry away the one-half of Antiochus' ships; this having been agreed to, he cut each of the ships in two, and carrying off the one-half, destroyed the king's whole navy.

A Roman officer, taken prisoner by Hannibal, was allowed to leave the camp on a promise that he would speedily return. Just after leaving, he returned on pretence of having forgotten something, and again went away. He then repaired to Rome, maintaining that his original promise to return, having once been performed, was no longer in force. The censors, however, would not sustain his plea, but fixed a stigma on him for his breach of engagement.

Tacitus tells us a story of Rhadamistus in Asia Minor, who, having besieged his uncle Mithridates, prevailed on him to leave his fortifications, by a promise that he would never hurt him either with steel or poison, which was ratified by a very peculiar method of lashing their thumbs together till the blood came. This assurance Rhadamistus affected rigorously to fulfil, but thought himself at liberty to tumble a huge wardrobe of clothes on his unsuspecting uncle, which fairly smothered him.

Aryandes, treating with the Barcœans, brought their ambassadors to a place prepared for the purpose, where he swore to observe the treaty as long as the earth on which they stood should continue firm. He had placed them on a pit having a trapdoor covered with earth, which he lost no time in removing; and having thus, as he conceived, terminated the treaty, assailed his allies sword in hand, while wholly unprepared for an attack.

In more modern times, a distinguished Spanish general, having bound himself by oath never to fight against the French army, whether on foot or on horseback, took the field against them at the battle of Rocroy in a sedan-chair.

The same disposition to deception, by verbal cavilling in oaths and obligations, is to be found in other classes of men, wherever self-interest is the prompter. The celebrated magician Nostradamus, having, in return for the gifts of magic, stipulated that the devil should have him if he was buried either in the church or out of it, evaded the condition by having himself buried in a hole in the wall. It

appears, from the histories of magic, that the devil has often been outwitted in a similar way by other persons than lawyers.

Herodotus gives us an anecdote of which Cervantes has since transferred the scene to Barataria, under the government of Sancho. Archetimus of Erythræa having made a journey to Tenedos, availed himself there of the hospitality of Cydias, with whom, for the sake of security, he deposited a sum of money which he had with him. Cydias, when requested to render up his trust, declined to do so, finding it more convenient to retain it. The parties went to law; and whether from the want of witnesses, or from the law of Tenedos resembling that of our own country, in allowing debts of this kind to be proved only scripto vel juramento, the case came to be referred to Cydias' oath. Cydias was too much of a knave to confess the truth, and too much of a coward to tell a bold lie, and devised the contrivance of concealing the cash in the hollow of a walking-cane, which he put into Archetimus' hands before taking the oath. He thereupon swore, that, although he had received the money in question, he had afterwards given it back. This was obviously what your lawyers would call an intrinsic quality, and, if the matter had thus been allowed to rest, was sufficient for Cydias' liberation. The fraud was detected, as Herodotus tells us, not by the ingenuity of the judge, or any cross-questioning by the plaintiff, for which there was ample room, but by the accident of Archetimus in his rage throwing down the stick with such violence as to break it, and bring at once the truth and the treasure to light. The old historian imputes the discovery to Divine Providence; and adds, that Cydias ultimately came to an unhappy end, which it is to be hoped was the case. It is certain, that upon such a state of the facts being established, under an indictment for perjury, any judge on the bench would have charged the jury to convict.

Many similar examples might be cited of the propensity I am here considering; and if in more recent times I were to resort to the writings of the Jesuits, I should be able to show a power of equivocation which would leave all other classes at an immeasurable distance. Those gentlemen may be considered as having refined on all previous refinements in this department of human knavery. Solicitous to reconcile in themselves and their adherents the literal ob. servance of morality, with a liberal use of every vice that could gratify their desires or advance their interests, they were at once bold and ingenious in their contrivances for this purpose. In order to secure the benefits, and at the same time avoid the sin of falsehood, they taught that it was lawful to use ambiguous terms in transactions, so as to understand them ourselves in a different sense from what they led others to adopt. If, however, at any time it was difficult to find equivocal words to serve the purpose, they had another expedient which could always be easily practised. This was the doctrine of mental reservations, according to which, as Sanchez delivers it, it is lawful to deny that you have done any thing which you have actually done, provided you accompany your asseveration with an understanding in your own mind, that you say you did not do it on a particular day, or before you were born, or with any similar mental qualification that may save from the perpetration of actual falsehood, although no indication of these additions be given to the party addressed. Thus it was allowable, either in giving testimony as a witness, or in taking a promissory oath, to deny or abjure any particular fact in the most explicit terms, and then to save yourselves from perjury by whispering in your sleeve, "I mean that I did not see it occur on the 31st of February," or "that I will not do it until I feel inclined," &c.

It is certainly, sir, a remarkable feature in the human conscience, that, with a full conviction of the turpitude of falsehood, it should thus lull itself asleep by the most fallacious opiates, and should think it innocent to deceive wilfully by a treacherous equivocation, while it believes it criminal to produce the same effect by an unequivocal lie. In whose sight it may consider itself to be justified by such means, it is difficult to tell: but the prevalence of the self-deception is undoubted, and shows how much most men, whether lawyers or not, are addicted, even in matters of moral sensibility, to look to the form rather than to the substance of things.

Many illustrations of this truth are to be found in more ordinary scenes than those I have hitherto noticed, and such as show that all flesh are subject to the frailty. The narration of such Jesuitical escapes and evasions, is found to be the most popular food both for the great vulgar and the small. You well remember, I dare say, the literal manner in which George Buchanan, the jester, is said to have obeyed the royal injunction never again to show his face at court; and the current fictions of Leper the Tailor, Lothian Tom, and others, which I see on your stalls in this country, are full of the same admirable trickery. Even the simplicity of the juvenile mind does not escape the contagion. on. I remember the case of a little schoolboy, who, having been convicted of some offence, and sentenced to the usual punishment, requested, as a favour, that its execution should be postponed until he had got his evening meal of bread and milk. This indulgence appearing reasonable, with the view of supporting him against the coming calamity, was formally granted to him, when the young delinquent declared that he did not mean to eat any bread and milk that evening, and contended consequently, that the promise made to him amounted to a reprieve sine die. I am sorry to add that the trap thus laid was not successful, and had no other effect than to bring down upon his head, or other portion of his body, an additional visitation of magisterial vengeance.

The poets themselves are not free from the vice I am condemning. "At lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs," which it seems he was not in the habit of doing at other perjuries. But to make matters surer, we generally find that even lovers seldom venture to forswear themselves without some pretext or excuse, however flimsy -some loophole of retreat, however slender. Of this kind is the apology for inconstancy in those verses of which the musicians have made so pretty a canon :

"I loved thee beautiful and kind,
And plighted an eternal vow;
So alter'd are thy face and mind,
'Twere perjury to love thee now."

Nothing can be more frivolous than this plea, which in Doctors' Commons would be treated with very little cere

mony. There is a similar excuse assigned in Love's Labour Lost for a change of mind of a different description:

"A woman I foreswore: but I will prove, Thou being a goddess, I foreswore not thee."

Half of the epigrams that have ever been written, and a pretty good pro

portion of poetical effusions that aspire to a higher character, owe their points and prettinesses to verbal equivocations. The pun or paronomasia is a strong instance of the same thing; and Addison, a good judge of human nature, has told us that "the seeds of punning are in the minds of all men; and, though they may be subdued by reason, reficction, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art." When we ask a sportsman if that is " his own hare or a wig?" or say, that "a door is not a door when it is a-jar;" or that "a nose is not a nose when it is a little red-dish," we push the system of verbal equivocation to

its extreme limit, and, by outdoing the vilest quibbles of Old Bailey practice, confirm the old adage, that "He who makes a pun will pick a pocket."

Enigmas and riddles of all kinds have a strong flavour of the same ingredient. The old enquiry of the Sphynx, "What animal that was which in the morning went on four feet, at mid-day on two, and in the evening on three," was founded on an unusual and deceptive application of the words employed, so as to lead people away from the obvious characteristies of human life in its progressive stages. Of the same character is the point in the old story which Petrarch tells in his Book of Memorable Things, and which, if we remember right, was adopted by Mr Newberry, or his author, into the Nursery Adventures of Tommy Twoshoes. Petrarch's narrative is to this effect. "There was," he says, "in Sicily, a huge statue, on which this incription was engraved in very ancient letters: On May-day I shall wear a golden head.' Some persons considered this statement as a jest; while others, following the mere letter

of the words, went the length of piercing the head of the statue on the day appointed, when its structure was found to be of as thick and as worthless materials as the operator's own. One man, however, was led, after much meditation, to suspect a more hidden meaning under the announceand, upon the return of the de

clared time, observed where the first rays of the sun threw the shadow of the head of the statue on the ground. In that place, he dug up the earth at a private opportunity, and found an immense treasure of gold. The epitaph mentioned by Le Sage, "Here lies the soul of the licentiate Garcia," was a quibble of a similar kind, and attended with equally beneficial results to the discoverer.

The jest-books are full of many flagrant verbal sophisms, said to have been perpetrated by logicians, and more particularly by university students newly initiated into the study of that necessary art. It cannot be denied that the fallaciæ æquivocationis, or amphiboliæ, as the logicians have called

them, are very extensively resorted to by all sophistical reasoners, whether orators or philosophers; and Dr Whateley, in his Logic, has given us a copious discussion upon the subject, with an appendix of ambiguous terms for the use of beginners. But these deceptions are no more the creation of logic than they are of law. They are congenital with us all: they accompany us from the cradle to the grave, growing with our growth and strengthening with our strength; and no apter illustration can be furnished of the established maxim, that language was given us not to express but

to conceal our sentiments.

I trust, sir, that after this exposition, the legal profession will in future be held exempt from at least one of the imputations to which it has hitherto been undeservedly subjected, and which, at the utmost, it can only be said to share with the whole of the human species. - I have the honour to be, my dear sir, your faithful and obliged servant,

LEGULEIUS LECTOR.

Mound Place, Edinburgh,
12th Νου. 1839.