achieved a brilliant reputation as an historian writing truthfully
of his countrymen, as a lawyer practising successfully among them,
as a statesman filling with ability exalted offices, and thus
possessed such pledges for being admirably informed and
exceedingly cautious, he would be reluctantly forced to take
refuge in the quibbling of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff:
--"I would not tell you on compulsion. Give you a reason on
compulsion! If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would
give no man a reason on compulsion, I!"

The Twelve Tables are most fatal for the author of the Annals;
they bring out his imposture so clearly to the broad glare of
noonday. Tacitus is made to place on record for the enlightenment
of posterity that, after those Tables were composed, his
countrymen ceased making just and equal laws, only occasionally
penal enactments; but more frequently, on account of the
differences between the two orders, decrees for attaining
illegitimate honours and for banishing distinguished citizens,
along with other sinister legislation:--"Compositae Duodecim
Tabulae, finis aequi juris; nam secutae leges, etsi aliquando in
maleficos ex delicto, saepius tamen dissensione ordinum, et
apiscendi illicitos honores, aut pellendi claros viros, aliaque ob
prava, per vim latae sunt" (III. 27). The statement is about as
contrary to fact as if an English historian were to assert that
after Charles I. assented to the Petition of Rights, there was an
end to all further enlargement in this country of the rights,
liberties and privileges of the subject,--the only laws passed
since then being for the repression of crime, the mitigation of
the penal code, and the establishment of religious equality;
because if we set aside all the laws that were passed by the