“In your whole lives, my lords, were you never entertained with so much ingenuity, my Lord Epimonus having at once mended all the faults of travellers. For, first, whereas they are abominable liars, he has not told you (except some malicious body has misinformed him concerning poor Spy) one syllable of falsehood. And, secondly, whereas they never fail to give the upper hand in all their discourses to foreign nations, still jostling their own into the kennel, he bears an honor to his country that will not dissolve in Cephalonia, nor be corrupted with figs and melons, which I can assure you is an ordinary obligation; and therefore hold it a matter of public concern that we be to no occasion of quenching my lord’s affections, nor is there any such great matter between us, but, in my opinion, might be easily reconciled, for though that which my lord gained by sitting in the house, I steadfastly believe, as he can affirm, was got fairly yet dare I not, nor do I think, that upon consideration he will promise for other gamesters, especially when they were at it so high, as he intimates not only to have been in use, but to be like enough to come about again. Wherefore say I, let them throw with boxes, for unless we will be below the politics of an ordinary, there is no such bar to cogging, it is known to his lordship that our game is most at a throw, and that every cast of our dice is in our suffrages, nor will he deny that partiality in a suffrage is downright cogging. “If the Venetian boxes be the most sovereign of all remedies against this same cogging, is it not a strange thing that they should be thrown first into the fire by a fair gamester? Men are naturally subject to all kinds of passions; some you have that are not able to withstand the brow of an enemy, and others that make nothing of this, are less proof against that of a friend. So that if your suffrage be barefaced, I dare say you shall not have one fair cast in twenty. But whatever a man’s fortune be at the box, he neither knows whom to thank, nor whom to challenge. Wherefore (that my lord may have a charitable opinion of the choice affection which I confess to have, above all other beauties, for that of incomparable Venice) there is in this way of suffrage no less than a demonstration that it is the most pure, and the purity of the suffrage in a popular government is the health, if not the life of it, seeing the soul is not otherwise breathed into the sovereign power than by the suffrage of the people. Wherefore no wonder if Postellus be of opinion that this use of the ball is the very same with that of the bean in Athens, or that others, by the text concerning Eldad and Medad, derive it from the Commonwealth of Israel. There is another thing, though not so material to us, that my lord will excuse me if I be not willing to yield, which is, that Venice subsists only by her situation. It is true that a man in time of war may be more secure from his enemies by being