364 FABLES. 



employ them as useful instruments in any dirty 

 business of faction or party, are shocked at the 

 baseness of their minds; and however convenient 

 it may be to " like the treason, the traitor will be 

 despised." History furnishes us with many in- 

 stances of king's and great men who have punished 

 the actors of treachery with death, though the part 

 they acted had been so conducive to their interests 

 as to give them a victory, or perhaps the quiet 

 possession of a throne: nor can princes pursue a 

 more just maxim than this, for a traitor is a villain, 

 and sticks at nothing to promote his own selfish 

 ends. He that will betray one master for a bribe, 

 will betray another on the same account. It is 

 therefore impolitic in any state to suffer such 

 wretches to live under its protection. Since then 

 this maxim is so good, and likely at all times to 

 be acted upon, what stupid rogues must they be 

 who undertake such precarious dirty work ! 



