the same strength, which enabled you to bring over the enemy's fleet,
might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back: that he had
good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as
treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt acts, so he
accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you
should be put to death.

The treasurer was of the same opinion. He showed to what straits his
majesty's revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which
would soon grow insupportable. That the secretary's expedient of putting
out your eyes was so far from being a remedy against this evil, that it
would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of
blinding some sort of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew
sooner fat. That his sacred majesty, and the council, who are your
judges, were to their own consciences fully convinced of your guilt,
which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death without the
formal proofs required by the strict letter of the law.

But his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital punishment,
was graciously pleaded to say, that since the council thought the loss
of your eyes too easy a censure, some other might be inflicted
hereafter. And your friend, the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard
again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected concerning the great
charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said that his excellency,
who had the sole disposal of the emperor's revenue, might easily provide
against that evil, by gradually lessening your establishment; by which,
for want of sufficient food, you would grow weak and faint, and lose
your appetite, and consume in a few months; neither would the stench of
your carcase be then so dangerous when it should become more than half
diminished; and, immediately upon your death, five or six thousand of