rchimedes, Roger Bacon,
Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Ramus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Napier, Descartes,
Leibnitz, Newton, Locke. I take none but names known out of their {6}
fields of work; and all were learned as well as sagacious. I have chosen my
instances: if any one will undertake to show a person of little or no
knowledge who has established himself in a great matter of pure thought,
let him bring forward his man, and we shall see.

This is the true way of putting off those who plague others with their
great discoveries. The first demand made should be--Mr. Moses, before I
allow you to lead me over the Red Sea, I must have you show that you are
learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians upon your own subject. The plea
that it is unlikely that this or that unknown person should succeed where
Newton, etc. have failed, or should show Newton, etc. to be wrong, is
utterly null and void. It was worthily versified by Sylvanus Morgan (the
great herald who in his _Sphere of Gentry_ gave coat armor to "Gentleman
Jesus," as he said), who sang of Copernicus as follows (1652):

"If Tellus winged be,
The earth a motion round;
Then much deceived are they
Who nere before it found.
Solomon was the wisest,
His wit nere this attained;
Cease, then, Copernicus,
Thy hypothesis is vain."

Newton, etc. were once unknown; but they made themselves known by what they
knew, and then brought forward what they could do; which I see is as good
verse as that of Herald Sylvanus. The demand for previous knowledge
disposes of twenty-nine cases out of thirty, and the thirtieth is worth
listening to.

I have not set down Copernicus, Galileo, etc. among the paradoxers, merely
because everybody knows them; if my list were quite complete, they would
have been in it. But the reader will find Gilbert, the great precursor of
sound magnetical theory; and several others on whom no censure can be cast,
though some of their paradoxes are inadmissible, {7} some unprovoked, and
some capital jokes, true or false: the author of _Vestiges of Creation_ is
an instance. I expect that my old correspondent, General Perronet Thompson,
will admit that his geometry is part and parcel of my plan; and also that,
if that plan embraced politics, he would claim a place for his _Catechism
on the Corn Laws_, a work at one time paradoxical, but which had more to do
with the abolition of the bread-tax than Sir Robert Peel.

My intention in publishing this Budget i