MULTIPLICATION, S4& 



some one a<3mit3 enough to gire us a second start^ — next 

 comes the question of " undue severity." 



FoT the senator who is also the general censor, 

 Mr* Hume allows limiself raihr a ^der margin than he 

 allows his victims. What would /le niako of the followmg 

 sentences, uttered by any other shigle mouth in one and 

 the same debate 1 — Oi^ening speech : I protest against 

 the coramission of murders, /^^twi Iitmdred or tif?o thousand 

 at a time," Closing speech : "I am convinced of the 

 accuracy of my information that /t>e hundred pc j-sonji 

 have heen destroyed as pirates," &c. Surely a man who 

 had been th«s informed, and believed tlie information to 

 bo accurate, need not, at starting on a grave and 

 " blasting " charge, multiply the truth by four. 



But he improves even on this ; " Wliat shall be said, 

 where men were suspected to be pirates, yet offered no 

 resistance, wMle ihemselves, timr wives^ and chUdrm were 

 destroyed \ 



Surely, the man who goes on thus must have fallen 

 into the error, against which a greater man warns him, 

 of " indulging some weakness in the management of his 

 intellectual faculty^ which is prejudicial to liim in the 

 search of truth/* * * ^ « fj^^^ whose a.'^aent goes beyond 

 his evidence, owes this excess of his adlierence only to 

 prejudice/' * * * " Truth is all simple, all pure, will 

 bear no mixture of anything else with it. It is rigid^ and 

 inflexible to any bye interests ; and so should the under- 

 standing be, whose use and excellence Hes in conforming 



