[68:1] Locke gives an admirable illustration of the sceptical spirit working on imperfect data, in the following anecdote. "It happened to a Dutch ambassador, who, entertaining the King of Siam with the particularities of Holland, which he was inquisitive after, amongst other things, told him, that the water in his country would sometimes, in cold weather, be so hard, that men walked upon it, and that it would bear an elephant if he were there. To which the king replied, 'Hitherto I have believed the strange things which you have told me, because I look upon you as a sober fair man: but now I am sure you lie.'"--_On the Understanding_, book iv. chap. 15, § 5. [71:1] The forms of voting and coming to a decision in the British Parliament have been adopted by other countries, not from any partiality towards our systems, but because in this we seem to have approached abstract perfection; and the framers of codes, after all endeavours to make forms of like excellence, are obliged to have recourse to those which have been followed for centuries in St. Stephen's. In the French Assemblies, ingenuity was frequently exercised in vain to devise some plan by which, after a series of proposals had been made, and debated upon, the sense of the meeting in regard to them might be ascertained and recorded without the record being liable to be questioned as inaccurate. In the English system, the matter is at once solved. Each proposed resolution is made and put on record before the discussion begins, and however many different proposals there may be in relation to the subject of debate, they must be all put in writing, and each one must be singly, and without intermixture with the others, adopted or rejected by a vote of the house. [72:1] He seems to have afterwards soothed himself with the reflection that his historical speculations were in favour of the stability of a fixed government, and opposed to innovating principles. In a letter to Madame de Boufflers, dated 23d Dec. 1768, he says:--