 had they not raised a hue and cry at the same time
against the lawful owners.
    I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and
artifice, - that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false sounds, --
was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a one,
and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of
deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor wits in this matter, that
the philosopher himself was deceived by it, - it was his glory to free the world
from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors; -- but this was not of the number;
so that instead of sitting down cooly, as such a philosopher should have done,
to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it; -- on the
contrary, he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry, and
halloo'd it as boisterously as the rest.
    This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since, - but your
reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the title to
it is not worth a groat; -- which by the bye is one of the many and vile
impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for hereafter.
    As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind too
freely, -- I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said to their
dispraise or prejudice, by the one general declaration -- That I have no
abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long
beards, -- any further than when I see they are bespoke and let grow on purpose
to carry on this selfsame imposture - for any purpose, - peace be with them! -
mark only, - I write not for them.
 

                                   Chap. XXI.

Every day for at least ten years together did my father resolve to have it
mended, -- 'tis not mended yet; -- no family but ours would have borne with it
an hour, - and what is most astonishing, there was not a subject in the world
upon which my father was so eloquent, as upon that of door-hinges. -- And yet at
the same time, he was certainly one of the greatest bubbles to them, I think,
that history can produce: his rhetoric and conduct were at perpetual
handy-cuffs. -- Never did the parlour-door open - but his philosophy or his
