_P._ If the common-law could not, or ought not, to take notice of such offences, how could the offenders be tried by twelve men, and found guilty, and hanged as they were? If the common-law take no notice of piracy, what other offence was it for which they were hanged? Is piracy two felonies, for one of which a man shall be hanged by the civil-law, and for the other by the common-law? Truly I never read weaker reasoning in any author of the law of England, than in Sir Edward Coke’s Institutes, how well soever he could plead. _L._ Though I have heard him much reprehended by others as well as by you, yet there be many excellent things, both for subtilty and for truth, in these his Institutes. _P._ No better things than other lawyers have, that write of the law as of a science. His citing of Aristotle, and of Homer, and of other books which are commonly read by gownmen, do, in my opinion, but weaken his authority; for any man may do it by a servant. But seeing the whole scene of that time is gone and past, let us proceed to somewhat else. Wherein doth an _Act of Oblivion_ differ from a Parliament-pardon? _L._ This word _Act of Oblivion_ was never in our law-books before the 12 _Car. II._ _c._ 11, and I wish it may never come again; but from whence it came, you may better know perhaps than I. _P._ The first and only Act of Oblivion that ever passed into a law, in any state that I have read of, was that _amnestia_ or _oblivion_ of all quarrels between any of the citizens of Athens, at any time before that act, without all exception of crime or person. The occasion whereof was this. The Lacedæmonians having totally subdued the Athenians, entered into the city of Athens, and ordained that the people should choose thirty people of their own city to have the sovereign power over them. These being chosen, behaved themselves so outrageously, as caused a sedition, in which the citizens on both sides were daily slain. There was then a discreet person that propounded to each of the parties this proposition, that every man should return to his own and forget all that was past; which proposition was made, by consent on both sides, into a public act, which for that cause was called an _oblivion_. Upon the like disorder happening in Rome by the murder of Julius Cæsar, the like act was propounded by Cicero, and indeed passed, but was within a few days after broken again by Marcus Antonius. In imitation of this act was made the act of 12 _Car. II._ _c._ 11. _L._ By this it seems, that the Act of Oblivion made by King Charles was no other than a Parliament-pardon, because it containeth a great number of exceptions, as the other Parliament-pardons do, and the act of Athens did not.