wights who ply along the shores of literature, we
find a shrewd ordinance of Charondas the Locrian legislator. Anxious to
preserve the judicial code of the state from the additions and amendments
of country members and seekers of popularity, he ordained that, whoever
proposed a new law should do it with a halter about his neck; whereby, in
case his proposition were rejected, they just hung him up--and there the
matter ended.

The effect was, that for more than two hundred years there was but one
trifling alteration in the judicial code; and legal matters were so clear
and simple that the whole race of lawyers starved to death for want of
employment. The Locrians, too, being freed from all incitement to
litigation, lived very lovingly together, and were so happy a people that
they make scarce any figure in history; it being only your litigatous,
quarrelsome, rantipole nations who make much noise in the world.

I have been reminded of these historical facts in coming to treat of the
internal policy of William the Testy. Well would it have been for him had
he in the course of his universal acquirements stumbled upon the
precaution of the good Charondas; or had he looked nearer home at the
protectorate of Oloffe the Dreamer, when the community was governed
without laws. Such legislation, however, was not suited to the busy,
meddling mind of William the Testy. On the contrary, he conceived that the
true wisdom of legislation consisted in the multiplicity of laws. He
accordingly had great punishments for great crimes, and little punishments
for little offences. By degrees the whole surface of society was cut up by
ditches and fences, and quickset hedges of the law, and even the
sequestered paths of private life so beset by petty rules and ordinances,
too numerous to be remembered, that one could scarce walk at large without
the risk of letting off a spring-gun or falling into a man-trap.

In a little while the blessings of innumerable laws became apparent; a
class of men arose to expound and confound them. Petty courts were
instituted to take cognizance of petty offences, pettifoggers began to
abound, and the community was soon set together by the ears.

Let me not be thought as intending anything derogatory to the profession
of the law, or to the distinguished members of that illustrious order.
Well am I aware that we have in this ancient city innumerable worthy
gentlemen, the knights-errant of modern days, who go about re