It is humbly to be hoped, that the legislature[19] will interpose on so extraordinary an occasion as this, and direct a punishment[20] some way proportionable to so execrable a crime. _Et quicunque tuum violavit vulnere corpus, Morte luat merita_----[21] [Footnote 1: No. 32 in the reprint. [T.S.]] [Footnote 2: To this number the writer of "The Political State of Great Britain" made a pretty tart reply. In the issue for April, 1711, pp. 315-320 he says: "One of the Tory writers, shall I call him? or rather libellers--one who presumptuously sets up for an Examiner--who, in order, as he fondly expects, to make his court to some men in power, with equal insolence and malice, makes it his weekly business to slander the moderate party; who, without the least provocation, brandishes his virulent pen against the best men ... instances in the murders of Caesar, Henry III. and Henry IV. of France, and of the Duke of Buckingham; and having extenuated the last, 'from the motives Felton is said to have had,' he concludes," etc. The writer further goes on to say: "As to the imputation of villanous assassinations, which the Examiner charges so home on the French nation, I am heartily sorry he has given them so fair an opportunity to retort the unfair and unjust argument from particulars to generals. For, without mentioning Felton, whose crime this writer has endeavoured _to extenuate_, no foreign records can afford a greater number of murders, parricides, and, to use the Examiner's expression, solid villanies, than our English history." Swift retorted on this writer in No. 42, _post_, pp. 276, 277. [T.S.]] [Footnote 3: Cicero, "Pro Sestio," 65. "But that is not a remedy when the knife is applied to some sound and healthy part of the body; that is the act of an executioner and mere inhumanity. Those are the men who really apply healing remedies to the republic, who cut out some pestilence as if it were a wen on the person of the state."--C.D. YONGE. [T.S.]] [Footnote 4: This refers to the attempted assassination of Harley and St. John by the Marquis de Guiscard. See Swift's "Memoirs Relating to that Change," etc. (vol. v., pp. 387-9 of present edition). [T.S.]] [Footnote 5: Henri III. was assassinated by Jacques Clément, a Dominican friar, August 1st, 1589. Henri IV. was assassinated by François Ravaillac, May 14th, 1610. [T.S.]] [Footnote 6: George Villiers, fourth Duke of Buckingham, was stabbed by Lieut. John Felton, August 23rd, 1628. [T.S.]] [Footnote 7: Admiral de Coligny was assassinated August 23rd, 1572. [T.S.]] [Footnote 8: Francois de Lorraine, Due de Guise, was shot in 1563. His son and successor (Henri le Balafré) was killed December 23rd, 1588. [T.S.]] [Footnote 9: Davila was the author of "Historia delle Guerre Civili di Francia" (_c._ 1630). He was assassinated in 1631. [T.S.]]