in support of their assertions,—can these philosophers consistently
listen to and believe the testimony of those who avowedly _get money_
by the tales they publish, and who do not even pretend that they incur
any serious risk in case of being detected in a falsehood? If, in
other cases, they have refused to listen to an account which has
passed through many intermediate hands before it reaches them, and
which is defended by those who have an interest in maintaining it; let
them consider through how many, and what very suspicious hands, _this_
story has arrived to them, without the possibility, as I have shown,
of tracing it back to any decidedly authentic source, after all;—to
any better authority, according to their own showing, than that of an
_unnamed_ and unknown foreign correspondent;—and likewise how strong
an interest, in every way, those who have hitherto imposed on them,
have in keeping up the imposture. Let them, in short, show themselves
as ready to detect the cheats, and despise the fables of politicians
as of priests.

But if they are still wedded to the popular belief in this point, let
them be consistent enough to admit the same evidence in _other_ cases
which they yield to in _this_. If, after all that has been said, they
cannot bring themselves to doubt of the existence of Napoleon
Buonaparte, they must at least acknowledge that they do not apply to
that question the same plan of reasoning which they have made use of
in others; and they are consequently bound in reason and in honesty to
renounce it altogether.


FOOTNOTES:

[3] "A report is spread, (says Voltaire in one of his works,) that