The best way to make the narration probable is to first consult with
ourselves on whatever is agreeable to nature, that nothing may be said
contrary to it; next, to find causes and reasons for facts, not for all,
but for those belonging to the question; and last, to have characters
answerable to the alleged facts which we would have believed; as, if one
were guilty of theft, we should represent him as a miser; of adultery,
as addicted to impure lusts; of manslaughter, as hot and rash. The
contrary takes place in defense, and the facts must agree with time,
place, and the like.
Sometimes a cause may be prepared by a proposition, and afterward
narrated. All circumstances are unfavorable to three sons who have
conspired against their father's life. They cast lots who shall strike
the blow. He on whom the lot falls, enters his father's bed-chamber at
night, with a poniard, but has not courage to put the design into
execution. The second and the third do the same. The father wakes. All
confess their wicked purpose, and by virtue of a law made and provided
for such case, they are to be disinherited. But should the father, who
has already made a partition of his estate in their favor, plead their
cause, he may proceed thus: "Children are accused of parricide, whose
father is still alive, and they are sued in consequence of a law that is
not properly applicable to their case. I need not here give an account
of a transaction that is foreign to the point of law in question. But if
you require a confession of my guilt, I have been a hard father to them,
and rather too much occupied in hoarding up the income of my estate,
which would have been better spent in necessaries for them." Afterward
he may say that they did not form this plan by themselves, that they
were instigated to it by others who had more indulgent parents, that the
result clearly showed they were not capable of so unnatural an action,
that there was no necessity for binding themselves by oath if in reality
they could have had such an inclination, nor of casting lots if each did
not want to avoid the perpetration of such a crime. All these
circumstances, such as they are, will be favorably received, softened in
some measure by the short defense of the previous propositions.