University of Virginia Library

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.