However, I merely throw out these conjectures without by any means contending that more plausible ones might not be suggested.  But whatever supposition we adopt, or whether we adopt any, the objections to the commonly received accounts will remain in their full force, and imperiously demand the attention of the candid sceptic.

I call upon those, therefore, who profess themselves advocates of free inquiry—­who disdain to be carried along with the stream of popular opinion, and who will listen to no testimony that runs counter to experience,—­to follow up their own principles fairly and consistently.  Let the same mode of argument be adopted in all cases alike; and then it can no longer be attributed to hostile prejudice, but to enlarged and philosophical views.  If they have already rejected some histories, on the ground of their being strange and marvellous,—­of their relating facts, unprecedented, and at variance with the established course of nature,—­let them not give credit to another history which lies open to the very same objections,—­the extraordinary and romantic tale we have been just considering.  If they have discredited the testimony of witnesses, who are said at least to have been disinterested, and to have braved persecutions and death in support of their assertions,—­can these philosophers consistently listen to and believe the testimony of those who avowedly get money by the tales they publish, and who do not even pretend that they incur any serious risk in case of being detected in a falsehood?  If, in other cases, they have refused to listen to an account which has passed through many intermediate hands before it reaches them, and which is defended by those who have an interest in maintaining it; let them consider through how many, and what very suspicious hands, this story has arrived to them, without the possibility, as I have shown, of tracing it back to any decidedly authentic source, after all;—­to any better authority, according to their own showing, than that of an unnamed and unknown foreign correspondent;—­and likewise how strong an interest, in every way, those who have hitherto imposed on them, have in keeping up the imposture.  Let them, in short, show themselves as ready to detect the cheats, and despise the fables of politicians as of priests.

But if they are still wedded to the popular belief in this point, let them be consistent enough to admit the same evidence in other cases which they yield to in this.  If, after all that has been said, they cannot bring themselves to doubt of the existence of Napoleon Buonaparte, they must at least acknowledge that they do not apply to that question the same plan of reasoning which they have made use of in others; and they are consequently bound in reason and in honesty to renounce it altogether.

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