"private correspondents" abroad; who these correspondents are, what means they have of obtaining information, or whether they exist at all, we have no way of ascertaining. We find ourselves in the condition of the Hindoos who are told by their priests that the earth stands on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise; but are left to find out for themselves what the tortoise stands on, or whether it stands on anything at all.
So much for our clear knowledge of the means of information possessed by these witnesses; next for the grounds on which we are to calculate on their veracity.
Have they not a manifest interest in circulating the wonderful accounts of Napoleon Buonaparte and his achievements, whether true or false? Few would read newspapers if they did not sometimes find wonderful or important news in them; and we may safely say that no subject was ever found so inexhaustibly interesting as the present.
It may be urged, however, that there are several adverse political parties, of which the various public prints are respectively the organs, and who would not fail to expose each other's fabrications.[1] Doubtless they would, if they could do so with-
- ↑ "I did not mention the difficulty of detecting a falsehood in any private or even public history, at the time and place where it is said to happen; much more where the scene is removed to ever so small a distance. . . . . But the matter never comes to any issue, if trusted to the common method of altercation and debate and flying rumors."—Hume's Essay on Miracles, p. 195, 12mo.; pp. 200, 801, 8vo. 1767; p. 127, 8vo. 1817.
ports made by each witness, nine only are true), then, at every time the story passes from one witness to another, the evidence is reduced to nine tenths of what it was before. Thus, after it has passed through the whole twenty, the evidence will be found to be less than one eighth."—La Place, Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités.
That is, the chances for the fact thus attested being true, will be, according to this distinguished calculator, less than one in eight. Very few of the common newspaper stories, however, relating to foreign countries, could be traced, if the matter were carefully investigated, up to an actual eye-witness, even through twenty intermediate witnesses; and many of the steps of our ladder would, I fear, prove but rotten; few of the reporters would deserve to have one in ten fixed as the proportion of their false accounts.
