realm, which vests their possessions in the Crown.  There is a gentleman of this coffee-house at this time exhibiting a bill in Chancery against his father’s younger brother, who by some strange magic has arrived at the value of half a plum, as the citizens call a hundred thousand pounds; and in all the time of growing up to that wealth, was never known in any of his ordinary words or actions to discover any proof of reason.  Upon this foundation my friend has set forth, that he is illegally master of his coffers, and has writ two epigrams to signify his own pretensions and sufficiency for spending that estate.  He has inserted in his plea some things which I fear will give offence; for he pretends to argue, that though a man has a little of the knave mixed with the fool, he is nevertheless liable to the loss of goods; and makes the abuse of reason as just an avoidance of an estate as the total absence of it.  This is what can never pass; but witty men are so full of themselves, that there is no persuading them; and my friend will not be convinced, but that upon quoting Solomon, who always used the word “fool” as a term of the same signification with “unjust,” and makes all deviation from goodness and virtue to come under the notion of folly—­I say, he doubts not, but by the force of this authority, let his idiot uncle appear never so great a knave, he shall prove him a fool at the same time.  This affair led the company here into an examination of these points; and none coming here but wits, what was asserted by a young lawyer, that a lunatic is in the care of the Chancery, but a fool in that of the Crown, was received with general indignation.  “Why that?” says old Renault.  “Why that?  Why must a fool be a courtier more than a madman?  This is the iniquity of this dull age:  I remember the time when it went on the mad side; all your top wits were scowrers,[393] rakes, roarers, and demolishers of windows.  I remember a mad lord who was drunk five years together, and was the envy of that age, and is faintly imitated by the dull pretenders to vice and madness in this.  Had he lived to this day, there had not been a fool in fashion in the whole kingdom.”  When Renault had done speaking, a very worthy man assumed the discourse:  “This is,” said he, “Mr. Bickerstaff, a proper argument for you to treat in your article from this place; and if you would send your Pacolet into all our brains, you would find, that a little fibre or valve, scarce discernible, makes the distinction between a politician and an idiot.  We should therefore throw a veil upon those unhappy instances of human nature, who seem to breathe without the direction of reason and understanding, as we should avert our eyes with abhorrence from such as live in perpetual abuse and contradiction to these noble faculties.  Shall this unfortunate man be divested of his estate, because he is tractable and indolent, runs in no man’s debt, invades no man’s bed, nor spends the estate he owes his children and his character; when one who