An old maxim has it that “fools and children sometimes speak the truth.” If “maxims are the condensed good sense of nations,” as Sir James Mackintosh pithily observes, it would require excessive presumption to deny the wisdom of this one, so universally received and acted upon. The ancient moralists, after rearing a queer medley of truth and nonsense upon a few wise sayings, pronounced the heterogeneous mass the “Science of Morality.” This was at least generous, for it must be owned that a more convenient appellation for all who desired to sin according to moral law, could not have been invented by their philosophic magnanimity. “It is in the creed, sir,” would have answered every accusation, and put an end to all further contention. “Know thyself,” and “Too much of nothing,” proverbial sayings for ages, were so well received that the seven wise men of Greece consecrated them to Apollo, and inscribed them in letters of gold upon the door of his temple at Delphos. After so important a precedent of respect to maxims, notwithstanding the many changes wrought by time since the days of Thales and Solon, he who should seek to reduce the practice of lying to scientific rules, might claim equal consideration for the axiom given above, which he would of course so interpret as to make all wise men liars. If the wisest and the best who ever assumed the troublesome nature of man, could hang all the law and the prophets upon two commandments, surely the modern man of science might build a system upon a single maxim, whose object would be more to increase the dominion of Satan than the glory of a different kingdom. The service he would thus render to society would be incalculable, and forever perpetuate his name as one of its most worthy benefactors. By teaching the public, young and old, and without distinction of sex, to lie according to an approved system, our contempt would no longer be aroused by the fools now addicted to the practice, and who constantly exhibit a stupidity only equalled by that of the first liar of whom we have any record. Though we may have mules in the professions, who only make work for keener and shrewder knaves, and blunderers in the sciences, this should be no excuse for bunglers in this most worthy art of lying. Such, however, could readily be got rid of by elevating the habit to the dignity of a science, which each should be permitted to practice after being skilled in its rules. To secure the more general proficiency of those who desired to study the system, it should be made an indispensable antecedent requisite, that they be fully worthy of their Prince, and as honest as the Lombardian sect spoken of in the bull of Pope Adrian VI., who fully acknowledged the devil as their head, and promised obedience to him. P. A. FOOTNOTES: