.

It is an indispensable preliminary to all disputes, that oaths are no arguments.

If any disputant slaps his hand upon the table, let him be informed that such an action does not clinch his argument, and is only pardonable in a blacksmith or a butcher.

If any disputant offers a wager, it is plain he has nothing else to offer, and there the dispute should end.

Any gentleman who speaks above the natural key of his voice, casts an imputation on his own courage; for cowards are loudest when they are out of danger.

'Contradictions are no arguments, nor any expressions to be made use of, such as-" That I deny— There you are mistaken-That is impossible"-or any of the like blunt assertions, which only irritate, and do not elucidate.

'The advantages of rank or fortune are no advantages in argumentation; neither is an inferior to offer, or a superior to extort, the submission of the understanding on such occasions; for every man's reason has the same pedigree; it begins and ends with himself. If a man disputes in a provincial dialect, or trips in his grammar, or (being Scotch or Irish) uses national expressions, provided they convey his meaning to the understanding of his opponent, it is a foolish jest to turn them into ridicule; for a man can only express his ideas in such language as he is master of.

Let the disputant who confutes another, forbear from triumph; forasmuch as he, who increases his knowledge by conviction, gains more in the contest, than he who converts another to his opinion; and the triumph more becomes the conquered, than the conqueror.

'Let every disputant make truth the only object of his controversy, and whether it be of his own finding, or of any other man's bestowing, let him think it worth his acceptance, and entertain it accordingly.'

NUMBER XIX.

THE following story is so extraordinary, that if I had not had it from good authority in the country where it happened, I should have considered it as the invention of some poet for the fable of a drama.

A Portuguese gentleman, whom I shall beg leave to describe no otherwise than by the name of Don Juan, was lately brought to trial for poisoning his half-sister by the same father, after she was with child by him. This gentleman had, for some years before his trial, led a very solitary life at his castle in the neighbourhood of Montremos, a town on the road between Lisbon and Badajos, the frontier garrison of Spain: I was shewn his castle as I passed through that dismal country, about a mile distant from the road, in a bottom surrounded with corktrees, and never saw a more melancholy habitation. The circumstances which made against this gentleman were so strong, and the story was in such general circulation in the neighbourhood where he lived, that although he laid out the greatest part of a considerable income in acts of charity, nobody ever entered his gates to thank him for his bounty, or solicit relief, except one poor father of the Jeronymite convent in Montremos, who was his confessor, and acted as his almoner at discretion.

A charge of so black a nature, involving the crime

of incest as well as murder, at length reached the ears of justice, and a commission was sent to Montremos to make inquiry into the case: the supposed criminal made no attempt to escape, but readily attended the summons of the commissioners. Upon the trial it came out, from the confession of the prisoner, as well as from the deposition of witnesses, that Don Juan had lived from his infancy in the family of a rich merchant at Lisbon, who carried on a considerable trade and correspondence in the Brazils: Don Juan being allowed to take this merchant's name, it was generally supposed that he was his natural son, and a clandestine affair of love having been carried on between him and the merchant's daughter, Josepha, who was an only child, she became pregnant, and a medicine being administered to her by the hands of Don Juan, she died in a few hours after, with all the symptoms of a person who had taken poison. The mother of the young lady survived her but a few days, and the father threw himself into a convent of mendicants, making over, by deed of gift, the whole of his property to the supposed murderer.

In this account there seemed a strange obscurity of facts, for some made strongly to the crimination of Don Juan, and the last mentioned circumstance was of so contradictory a nature, as to throw the whole into perplexity: and, therefore, to compel the prisoner to a farther elucidation of the case, it was thought proper to interrogate him by torture.

Whilst this was preparing, Don Juan, without betraying the least alarm upon what was going forward, told his judges that it would save them and himself some trouble, if they would receive his confession upon certain points, to which he should truly speak, but beyond which all the tortures in the world, could not force one syllable: he said that he was not the

son, as it was supposed, of the merchant with whom he lived, nor allied to the deceased Josepha, any otherwise than by the tenderest ties of mutual affection and a promise of marriage, which however, he acknowledged had not been solemnized: that he was the son of a gentleman of considerable fortune in the Brazils, who left him an infant to the care of the merchant in question; that the merchant, for reasons best known to himself, chose to call him by his own name, and this being done in his infancy, he was taught to believe that he was an orphan youth, the son of a distant relation of the person who adopted him; he begged his judges therefore to observe that he never understood Josepha to be his sister; that as to her being with child by him, he acknowledged it, and prayed God forgiveness for an offence, which it had been his intention to repair by marrying her: that with respect to the medicine, he certainly did give it to her with his own hands, for that she was sick in consequence of her pregnancy, and being afraid of creating alarm or suspicion in her parents, had required him to order certain drugs from an apothecary, as if for himself, which he accordingly did, and he verily believed they were faithfully mixed, inasmuch as he stood by the man whilst he prepared the medicine, and saw every ingredient separately put in.

The judges thereupon asked him, if he would take it on his conscience to say, that the lady did not die by poison: Don Juan, bursting into tears for the first time, answered, to his eternal sorrow he knew that she did die by poison.-Was that poison contained in the medicine she took?-It was.-Did he impute the crime of mixing the poison in the medicine to the apothecary, or did he take it on himself? -Neither the apothecary, nor himself was guilty. -Did the lady from a principle of shame (he was

then asked), commit the act of suicide, and infuse the poison without his knowledge?-He started into horror at the question, and took God to witness, that she was innocent of the deed.

The judges seemed now confounded, and for a time abstained from any farther interrogatories, debating the matter amongst themselves by whispers ; when one of them observed to the prisoner, that according to his confession, he had said she did die by poison, and yet by the answers he had now given, it should seem as if he meant to acquit every person on whom suspicion could possibly rest; there was, however, one interrogatory left, which, unnatural as it was, however, he would put to him for form's sake only, before they proceeded to greater extremities, and that question involved the father or mother of the lady,-Did he mean to impute the horrid intention of murdering their child to the parents ? No,' replied the prisoner in a firm tone of voice, I am certain no such intention ever entered the hearts of the unhappy parents, and I should be the worst of sinners, if I imputed it to them.'-The judges, upon this, declared with one voice that he was trifling with the court, and gave orders for the rack; they would however for the last time demand of him, if he knew who it was that did poison Josepha: to which he answered without hesitation, that he did know, but that no tortures should force him to declare it; as to life, he was weary of it, and they might dispose of it as they saw fit; he could not die in greater tortures than he had lived.

They now took this peremptory recusant, and stripping him of his upper garments, laid him on the rack; a surgeon was called in, who kept his fingers on his pulse; and the executioners were directed to begin their tortures: they had given him one severe stretch by ligatures fixed to his extremities and passed over