O’er-match’d, unaided, and his foes at hand,
Safely the coward may the brave withstand;
But think not, dastard, thus thy glories shine—
He fears a greater force, but scoffs at thine.
It is very inhuman to deny succour and comfort to people in tribulation; but to insult them, and add to their misfortunes, is something superlatively brutish and cruel. There is, however, in the world, a sort of people of this vile temper, and littleness of mind, who wait for an opportunity of aggravating their neighbour’s affliction, and defer the execution of their evil inclinations until they can do it with the severest effect. If a person suffer under an expensive law-suit, lest he should escape from that, one of these gentlemen will take care to arrest him in a second action, hoping, at least, to keep him at bay, while the more powerful adversary attacks him on the other side. One cannot consider this temper, without observing something remarkably cowardly in it: for these shuffling antagonists never begin their encounter till they are very sure the person they aim at is already over-matched.
THE FISHERMAN.
A certain Fisherman having laid his nets in the river, and placed them across the whole stream from one side to the other, took a long pole, and fell to beating the water to make the fish strike into his nets. One of his neighbours seeing him do so, wondered what he meant, and going up to him, Friend, says he, what are you doing here? Do you think it is to be suffered that you shall stand splashing and dashing the water, and making it so muddy, that it is not fit for use? Who do you think can live at this rate? He was going on in a great fury, when the other interrupted him, and replied, I do not much trouble myself how you are to live with my doing this; but I assure you I cannot live without it.
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 mischief 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 something 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 power, 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 happiness 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.