Were it not that the false pretences of monarchs
produce such melancholy effects, their hypocrisy
would be altogether ridiculous. The king of
England, according to his minister's account, is
most disinterestedly fighting to preserve Europe
from the yoke of Bonaparte by land; and
the little French emperor, no less disinterested
than his brother king, is fighting to preserve the
world from the domination of England by sea.
Between them both, a good portion of the whole
world, by land and by sea, is kept in a state, to
which, plague, pestilence and famine are modes
of comparative happiness. There is somewhere,
or at any rate, there ought to be, a fable to the
following effect.
The porcupine was once seized with an unaccountable
fit of universal benevolence, so that
he never could see any of the weaker sort of animals,
but he must either carry them on his back,
or cover them with his body, to keep them from
harm. The consequence was, the poor little
devils got so pricked and worried by the quills of
their troublesome protector, that many of them,
in a short time, had not a drop of blood left, and
others were reduced to skin and bone. Upon
this, the wretched survivors came to him in a body,
and with great humility requested, that in
future, when his majesty saw them in any difficulty,
he would graciously suffer them to get
out of it as well as they could, without his interference.