He knew that a French Antiquarian (Claude Seissel) had derived the name of the Salic law from the Latin word _Sal, comme une loy pleine de sel, c'est a dire pleine de sapience,_[1] and this the Doctor thought a far more rational etymology than what some one proposed either seriously or in sport, that the law was called _Salique_ because the words _Si aliquis_ and _Si aliqua_ were of such frequent occurrence in it. “To be born a manchild,” says that learned author who first composed an Art of Rhetoric in the English tongue, “declares a courage, gravity and constancy. To be born a woman, declares weakness of spirit, neshenes of body and fickleness of mind.”[2] Justin Martyr, after saying that the Demons by whom according to him the system of heathen mythology was composed, spake of Minerva as the first Intelligence and the daughter of Jupiter, makes this observation; “now this we consider most absurd, to carry about the image of Intelligence in a female form!” The Father said this as thinking with the great French comic poet that a woman never could be any thing more than a woman. _Car, voyez-vous, la femme est, comme on dit, mon maître, Un certain animal difficile à connoître, Et de qui la nature est fort encline au mal; Et comme un animal est toujours animal. Et ne sera jamais qu' animal, quand sa vie Dureroit cent mille ans; aussi, sans repartie, La femme est toujours femme, et jamais ne sera Que femme, tant qu'entier le monde durera._ [Footnote 1: BRANTÔME.] [Footnote 2: WILSON.] A favourite anecdote with our Philosopher was of the Barbadoes Planters, one of whom agreed to exchange an English maid servant with the other for a bacon pig, weight for weight, four-pence per pound to be paid for the overplus, if the balance should be in favour of the pig, sixpence if it were on the Maid's side. But when they were weighed in the scales, Honour who was “extreme fat, lazy and good for nothing,” so far outweighed the pig, that the pig's owner repented of his improvident bargain, and refused to stand to it. Such a case Ligon observes, when he records this notable story, seldom happened; but the Doctor cited it as shewing what had been the relative value of women and pork in the West Indies. And observe, he would say, of white women, English, Christian women,—not of poor heathen blacks, who are considered as brutes, bought and sold like brutes, worked like brutes—and treated worse than any Government ought to permit even brutes to be treated.