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 are alive at this day to testify it; therefore,
deny it not."

Much of the same kind is the testimony of our brave countrymen, who
are ready to produce the scars they received in fighting against this
terrible Buonaparte. That they fought and were wounded, they may
safely testify; and probably they no less firmly _believe_ what they
were _told_ respecting the cause in which they fought: it would have
been a high breach of discipline to doubt it; and they, I conceive,
are men better skilled in handling a musket, than in sifting evidence,
and detecting imposture. But I defy any one of them to come forward
and declare, _on his own knowledge_, what was the cause in which he
fought,—under whose commands the opposed generals acted,—and whether
the person who issued those commands did really perform the mighty
achievements we are told of.

Let those, then, who pretend to philosophical freedom of inquiry,—who
scorn to rest their opinions on popular belief, and to shelter
themselves under the example of the unthinking multitude, consider
carefully, each one for himself, what is the evidence proposed to
himself in particular, for the existence of such a person as Napoleon
Buonaparte:—I do not mean, whether there ever was a person bearing
that _name_, for that is a question of no consequence; but whether any