The most singular part of the story is, that with all Matthew's well-known intelligence, good sense, prudence, amiability, and virtue, his zeal got the better of his consistency. He and his friends who most warmly espoused the cause of the great impostor, were those who from time immemorial had upheld the democracy of the constitution, had rung the changes upon all the virtuous attributes of low life, "Honest Poverty," and "The Sovereignty of the People;" but, strange to say, in their excessive zeal for their new idol, these equalizing politicians decided unanimously, that all the witnesses who were to prove her misdeeds, were perjured villains and infamous rogues, even before they had said a syllable on the subject, because, forsooth, they were poor and shabbily clothed, as if a line coat were essential to truth and justice, or that a poor man could not speak truth.
Now really to me their poverty (if one may judge by the accounts which have been handed down of them,) appears one of the strongest proofs of their honesty; for, had they been tampered with as Whittington insinuated, it is not improbable that some part of their earnings would have been expended in the purchase of such habits as might at least have protected them from insult in the streets.
There was one objection to their evidence, which, inasmuch as it is patriotic, is honourable--they were foreigners, and therefore not to be believed.----Now, touching the justice of this sweeping decision much may be said; and it is by no means unpleasing to see that even in these days there is still a national prejudice against foreign habits and manners; the looseness of conduct, and general want of delicacy of the continental nations, are at variance with the pure and better regulated habits of our countrymen and countrywomen; and in Whittington's days it clearly appears that morality had so firmly established itself in England, that a foreigner was not to be credited on oath.
In the instance of this nondescript lady, this feeling certainly had not so much weight as it might have had in many others, nor was the expression of it over-gallant, considering that she herself was a foreigner and educated, if St. Cas and other authors are to be believed, in one of the most licentious schools of continental incontinence.