al societies, magazines, and students are, in a real sense, the
guardians of historic truth. If a book is published which falsifies
history, it is our right, and, if the falsification is important, it may
be our duty, to expose the error. So, if those having the administration
of a government falsify history, as the Guizot ministry of France did,
when, vainly hoping to stem the tide of opposition to Louis Phillipe, it
covered Paris with handbills declaring "He is not a Bourbon, he is a
Valois," it is our privilege to "put the foot down firmly," as President
Lincoln said, upon any such falsification. So, too, if a court of
justice commits the indiscretion of falsifying history, as the Supreme
Court of the United States did in the legal-tender case, Guilliard _v._
Greenman, 111 U.S., 421, it well becomes the historic student to step
into the arena, as Mr. Bancroft has done, and, logically speaking, put
that court to the sword. To permit such falsifications to pass unnoticed
and unchallenged is a species of connivance at error; for, to quote a
maxim which is recognized alike in morals and in law, _Qui tacet
consentire videtur:_ "Silence gives consent."

[7] Substance of an address before the New England Historic-Genealogical
Society, April 7 1886.

An able lawyer of the Granite State bar, commenting on the decision of
the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in the case of Eastman _v._ Moulton,
3 N.H., 156, remarked that "the Court, without knowing it, repealed
nearly two hundred years of history."[8] In like manner, it may be said
that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, in a decision recently
made, has falsified the juridical history of this Colony, Province, and
Commonwealth for more than two hundred years. We refer to its opinion in
the divorce suit of Robbins _v._ Robbins, printed, with the briefs of
counsel, in 1 New England Reporter, 434, and, without the briefs of
counsel, in 140 Mass., 528.

[8] The Early Jurisprudence of New Hampshire. An address delivered
before the New Hampshire Historical Society, June 3, 1883. By John M.
Shirley, Esq.

The only question presented to the court in that case was whether
certain conduct on the part of the husband amounted in law to connivance
at the infidelity imputed by him to his wife. For one hundred years a
statute has been in force in Massachusetts (which, however, is only a
reenactment of what had long previously been recognized here as
unwritten law) provi