174 FABLES. 



APPLICATION. 



THIS Fable is levelled at those who love to 

 " fish in troubled waters," and whose execrable 

 principles are such, that they care not what mis- 

 chief or what confusion they occasion in the world, 

 provided they can obtain their ends, or even gratify 

 some little selfish appetite. Little villains would 

 set fire to a town, provided they could rake some- 

 thing" of value to themselves out of its ashes ; or 

 kindle the flames of discord among friends and 

 neighbours, purely to gratify their own malicious 

 temper; and among the great ones there are those 

 who, to succeed in their ambitious designs, will 

 make no scruple of involving their country in 

 divisions and animosities at home, and sometimes 

 in war and bloodshed abroad : provided they do 

 but maintain themselves in powe'r, they care not 

 what havoc and desolation they bring upon the 

 rest of mankind. Their only reason is, that it 

 must be so, because they cannot live as they wish 

 without it. But brutish unsocial sentiments like 

 these, are such as a mere state of nature would 

 scarcely suggest; and it is perverting the very end, 

 and overturning the first principles of society, 

 when, instead of contributing to the welfare of 

 mankind, in return for the benefits we receive from 

 them, we thrive by their misfortunes, or subsist by 

 their ruin. Those, therefore, who have the happi- 

 ness of mankind at heart, (for happiness and 

 morality are inseparably connected) should enter 

 their protest against such wicked selfish notions, 

 and oppose them with all their might; at the same 

 time shunning the society of their possessors as a 

 plague, and consigning their characters to the 

 detestation of posterity. 



