Secondly, there is a moral inference to be drawn from the effect which the story produced upon Gibbon. He could not invalidate, or dispute the testimony upon which it came before him; but he chose to disbelieve it. For he was ignorant that the facts might be physically true, and he would not on any evidence give credit to what appeared miraculous. A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom, or even to knowledge, as a stubborn temper to happiness. CHAPTER CCII. A LAW OF ALFRED'S AGAINST LYING TONGUES. OBSERVATIONS ON LAX ONES. As I have gained no small satisfaction to myself,—so I am desirous that nothing that occurs here may occasion the least dissatisfaction to others. And I think it will be impossible any thing should, if they will be but pleased to take notice of my design. HENRY MORE. If the laws of our great Alfred, whose memory is held in such veneration by all who are well acquainted with his history, and his extraordinary virtues, and whose name has been so often taken in vain by speculative reformers who were ignorant of the one, and incapable of estimating the other;—if the laws of Alfred, I say, had continued in use, everything relating to the reproduction of human tongues would long before this time have been thoroughly understood; for by those laws any one who broached a public falsehood, and persisted in it, was to have his tongue cut out; and this punishment might not be commuted for any smaller fine than that at which the life of the criminal would have been rated. The words of the law are these: DE RUMORIBUS FICTITIIS. _Si quis publicum mendacium confingat, et ille in eo firmetur, nullâ levi re hoc emendet, sed lingua ei excidatur; nec minori precio redimi liceat, quam juxta capitis æstimationem censebatur._ What a wholesome effect might such a law have produced upon orators at public meetings, upon the periodical press, and upon the debates in Parliament. “I am charmed,” says Lady M. W. Montague, “with many points of the Turkish law, to our shame be it spoken, better designed and better executed than ours; particularly the punishment of convicted liars (triumphant criminals in our country, God knows!): they are burnt in the forehead with a hot iron, when they are proved the authors of any notorious falsehoods. How many white foreheads should we see disfigured, how many fine gentlemen would be forced to wear their wigs as low as their eyebrows, were this law in practice with us!”