ESSAYS AT A REPUBLIC. 259 
Is there not here an idea of property, and of the sacred rights of 
labour ? 
Where shall they find securities, and how assure a commencement 
of public order? It is curious to know in what way the birds have 
resolved the question. 
Two solutions presented themselves. The first was that of associ- 
ation—the organization of a government which should concentrate 
force, and by the reunion of the weak form a defensive power. The 
second (but miraculous? impossible? imaginative?) would have been 
the realization of the aerial city of Aristophanes,—the construction of 
a dwelling-place guarded by its lightness from the unwieldy brigands 
of the air, and inaccessible to the approaches of the brigands of the earth 
—the hunter, the serpent. 
These two things—the one difficult, the other apparently im- 
possible—the bird has realized. 
At first, association and government. Monarchy is the inferior 
venture. Just as the apes have a king to conduct each band, several 
species of birds, especially in dangerous emergencies, appear to follow 
a chief. 
The ant-eaters have a king; so have the birds of paradise. The 
tyrant, an intrepid little bird of extraordinary audacity, affords his 
protection to some larger species, which follow and confide in him. It 
is asserted that the noble hawk, repressing its instincts of prey for 
certain species, allows the trembling families which trust in his 
generosity to nestle under and around him. 
But the safest fellowship is that between equals. The ostrich, the 
penguin, a crowd of species, unite for this purpose. Several kinds, 
associating for the purpose of travel, form, at the moment of emigration, 
into temporary republics. We know the good understanding, the 
republican gravity, the perfect tactic of the storks and cranes. Others, 
smaller in size or less completely armed—in climates, moreover, where 
nature, cruelly prolific, engenders without pause their formidable foes— 
place their abodes close together, but do not mingle them, and under a 
common roof, living in separate partitions, form veritable hives. 
