"At a parliament under Henry III., 'Rogaverunt omnes Episcopi ut consentirent quod nati ante matrimonium essent legitimi, et omnes Comites et Barones una voce responderunt quod nolunt leges Angliæ mutari.' This famous answer has been quoted a thousand and a thousand times, and yet nobody seems to have understood the management. The bishops, as partizans of the Pope, were for subjecting England to the imperial and papal laws, and therefore began with a circumstance most to the taste of the Barons. The Barons smelt the contrivance; and rejected a proposition most agreeable to them, for fear of the consequences, the introduction of the imperial laws, whose very genius and essence was arbitrary despotic power. Their answer shows it: 'Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari:' they had nothing to object to the reform, but they were afraid for the constitution."
C. I. R.
Nugget (Vol. vi., pp. 171. 281.; Vol. vii., p.143.).—T. K. arrogantly sets aside the etymology of W. S.; and, in lieu of the Persian nugud of the latter, would have us believe that nugget is nothing more than a Yankee corruption of an ingot. I
hold with W. S. notwithstanding, and so will all who have had any dealings with the Bengalees: the term nuggut pisa being with them a common one for "hard cash;" and as the Hindostanee language is largely indebted to the Persian, the derivation of W. S. is no doubt correct. To account for its occurrence in Australia, it is only necessary to say that that country has been for some years past a sanatarium for the debilitated Qui Hye's, many of whom have settled there; and becoming interested in the "diggings," have given the significant term of nuggut to what has in reality turned out hard cash, both to them and to certain lucky gentlemen in this city—holders of the script of the "Great Nuggut Vein" of Australia.
J. O.
Blackguard (Vol. vii., p. 77.).—It may, in some degree, support the first portion of the argument so interestingly stated by Sir J. Emerson Tennent respecting the derivation of this term, to record that, in my youth, when at school at the New Academy in Edinburgh, some five or six-and-twenty years ago, I used frequently to be engaged, with my schoolfellows, in regular pitched battles, technically called by us bickers, with the town boys, consisting chiefly of butchers' and bakers' boys, whom we were accustomed to designate as the blackguards, without, I am sure, ever attaching to that word the more opprobrious meaning which it now generally bears; but only indicating by it those of a lower rank in life than ourselves, the gentlemen.
May I venture to add, that whilst the former portion of Sir J. E. Tennent's Note seems to me to be fully satisfactory in proof that the term blackguard is originally derived from the ancient appellation of menials employed in the lowest and most dirty offices of a great household, and that it is thus purely English,—the last two paragraphs, on the other hand, appear to advocate an unnecessary and far-fetched derivation of the word from the French, and which, I humbly conceive, the true sense of the alleged roots, blague, blaguer, blagueur, by no means justifies; it being impossible to admit that these are, in any sort, "corresponding terms" with blackguard.
G. W. R. Gordon.
Stockholm.