322 FABLES. 



APPLICATION. 



NOTHING gives more entertainment to honest 

 men, than to see rogues and sharpers tricked and 

 punished in the pursuit of their schemes of villainy, 

 by making their own contrivances instrumental in 

 bringing down their wickedness upon their own 

 heads. In these instances, justice seems as it were 

 to be acting in person, and saves the trouble of 

 publicly enforcing punishment by the penal laws; 

 but indeed vice carries with it its own punishment, 

 and the misery attendant upon it in this world, 

 seems always pretty exactly balanced to its various 

 degrees of enormity. The abandoned man drags 

 on a contemptible or infamous life, Avith a con- 

 stantly deadened or disturbed conscience, and 

 amidst associates like himself, where he can never 

 hope to meet with either friendship or fidelity. 



