Henry Fielding: The History of Tom Jones, a foundling

BOOK XII. CONTAINING THE SAME INDIVIDUAL TIME WITH THE FORMER. 7. Chapter vii. Containing a remark or two... (continued)

The exciseman shook his head at this speech, and the puppet-show man said, "Madness was sometimes a difficult matter for a jury to decide: for I remember," says he, "I was once present at a tryal of madness, where twenty witnesses swore that the person was as mad as a March hare; and twenty others, that he was as much in his senses as any man in England.--And indeed it was the opinion of most people, that it was only a trick of his relations to rob the poor man of his right."

"Very likely!" cries the landlady. "I myself knew a poor gentleman who was kept in a mad-house all his life by his family, and they enjoyed his estate, but it did them no good; for though the law gave it them, it was the right of another."

"Pogh!" cries the clerk, with great contempt, "who hath any right but what the law gives them? If the law gave me the best estate in the country, I should never trouble myself much who had the right."

"If it be so," says Partridge, "Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum."

My landlord, who had been called out by the arrival of a horseman at the gate, now returned into the kitchen, and with an affrighted countenance cried out, "What do you think, gentlemen? The rebels have given the duke the slip, and are got almost to London. It is certainly true, for a man on horseback just now told me so."

"I am glad of it with all my heart," cries Partridge; "then there will be no fighting in these parts."

"I am glad," cries the clerk, "for a better reason; for I would always have right take place."

"Ay, but," answered the landlord, "I have heard some people say this man hath no right."

"I will prove the contrary in a moment," cries the clerk: "if my father dies seized of a right; do you mind me, seized of a right, I say; doth not that right descend to his son; and doth not one right descend as well as another?"