test princes do no more.

"This proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole
board. Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but, rising
up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his
opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the services you had
performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of
your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish the fire by discharge
of urine in her majesty's apartment (which he mentioned with horror),
might, at another time, raise an inundation by the same means, to drown
the whole palace; and 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 kind of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew
sooner fat; that his sacred majesty and the council, who are your judges,
were, in 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 pleased to say, that since the council thought the loss of
your eyes too easy a censure, some other way may 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 for you would grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite,
and consequently, decay, and consume in a few months; neither would the
stench of your carcass be then so dangerous, when it