No writer can be better qualified to speak with authority on such a topic as this than is Mr. BREWER. Familiar with State Papers and with records of all kinds for a very long period, he has won the deep respect of all students of our history by the uses to which his knowledge has been applied. But the ablest writer will sometimes write hastily. The most impartial inquirer will now and then reach a conclusion by overleaping part of the evidence. The sweeping passage which I have quoted, like other passages in Mr. RILEY’S preface to _Liber Custumarum_, previously noticed, leaves altogether out of view three or four whole classes of testimony—chains not links—having a vital bearing on the issue. For example— [Sidenote: Sir T. Wilson to King James I, _Domestic Corresp._, vol. xcvi, § 41*, seqq. (R. H.)] I. It disregards the fact that certain bundles of State letters and papers were given by the King’s order to Sir Robert COTTON, during the reign of JAMES THE FIRST. These, indeed, were commanded to be ‘subscriptions and signatures of Princes and great men, attached to letters _otherwise unimportant_.’ But who is to tell us what was the estimate of ‘importance’ in papers of State formed, two centuries and a half ago, by JAMES, who gave the order, or by Sir Thomas WILSON, who received it? II. It disregards the fact that long before, as well as long after, that known order of 1618, Sir Robert’s possession of papers once the property of the Government was so published and so recognized as to imply, by fair induction, that the possession must have been—as far as he was concerned—a lawful one. In his own writings, he iterates and reiterates reference to national documents then in his own collection. His references are specific and minute. Secretaries of State write to him, asking leave to inspect original Treaties (sometimes in order to lay them before the King in person) and promising to return them promptly. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, as above, 1621, March; and _passim_; also _Council Books_ (C. O.).] Law Officers of the Crown desire him kindly to afford them opportunities for collating public instruments, preserved at Cotton House, with public instruments still in the repositories of the Crown. III. It leaves out of sight the fact that in the correspondence of Sir Edward COKE with Sir Robert COTTON there is a passage which also _implies_—though it does not expressly assert—that Sir Robert had received from King JAMES a permission to select records, of some kind or other, from the Tower of London, anterior to the qualified permission, [Sidenote: Sir E. Coke to Sir R. Cotton; MS. Cott. Julius, ciii (Undated; probably 1612). (B. M.)] above mentioned, given in 1618, to select ‘autographs’ from the Paper Office;