LAWYER.—You desire a thing altogether as impossible as it would be to bring the nation to make use of one sort of weights and measures. Why would you have the laws everywhere the same when you see the point is different in all places? For my own part, after thinking till my head was like to split, all I have been able to conclude for the soul of me, is this: That as the measure of Paris is different from that at St. Denis, it follows that men’s judgments must also be different in both. The varieties of nature are infinite, and it would be wrong in us to endeavor to render uniform what she intends shall not be so.
CLIENT.—Yet, now I think on it, I have a strong notion the English have but one sort of weight and measures.
LAWYER.—The English! aye. Why the English are mere barbarians; they have, it is true, but one kind of measure, but, to make amends, they have a score of different religions.
CLIENT.—There you mention something strange indeed! Is it possible that a nation who live under the same laws, should not likewise live under the same religion?
LAWYER.—It is; which makes it plain they are abandoned to their own reprobate understandings.
CLIENT.—But may not it also prove that they think laws made for regulating the external actions of men and religion the internal? Possibly the English, and other nations, were of opinion that laws related to the concernments of man with man and that religion regarded man’s relation to God. I am sure I should never quarrel with an Anabaptist who should take it into his head to be christened at thirty years old, but I should be horridly offended with him should he fail paying his bill of exchange. They who sin against God ought to be punished in the other world; they who sin against man ought to be chastised in this.
LAWYER.—I understand nothing of all this. I am just going to plead your cause.
CLIENT.—I wish to God you understood it better first.
DIALOGUE BETWEEN MADAME DE MAINTENON AND MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.[*]
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—’Tis true, I did request you to come to see me privately, perhaps you [*] Madame de Maintenon and Mademoiselle Ninon de l’Enclos had lived long together. The author has often heard the late Abbé de Châteauneuf say, that Madame de Maintenon had used her utmost endeavors to engage Ninon to turn nun, and to come and comfort her at Versailles.