54 



FABLES. 



will despise an insidious bribe, and the greater the 

 offer which is designed to buy his silence, the 

 louder and more indignantly will he open out 

 against the miscreant who \vould thus practise 

 upon him. He knows that the favours held out to 

 him are not marks of the love and regard of him 

 who would confer them, but are meant as the price 

 at which he is to sell his honour and his virtue. 

 With a mind unpolluted, his noble resolution never 

 fails to produce the happiest consequences, by 

 preserving his friends and himself from the mis- 

 chievous projects laid against them. So true it is, 

 that virtue is its own reward ; while corruption and 

 venality are sure in the end to bring the greatest 

 miseries on those, and their adherents, who are 

 so base, or perhaps inconsiderate, as to subject 

 themselves to future evils of the most fatal nature, 

 for the sake of a little present profit. 



