"'Sir,' replied the man, 'our laws relating to thirst are much more excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished, physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by a single bottle; they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water. Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed from the supervisors of our health.'
"I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities. His conversation raised my curiosity. 'Our nation,' said he, 'is so completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws, customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.'
"I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,' because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas! must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay, after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous.
"I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was superior to all the rest in industry.
"A provincial of the country I am speaking of was once bitterly complaining to me of all the grievances under which he labored. He was well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be hanged for having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quentin and Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared to shudder more violently. The government of the Romans seemed to him the most intolerable of all. 'Nothing can be worse,' he said, 'than to be under foreign masters.' At last we came to the Druids. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'I was quite mistaken: it is still worse to be governed by sanguinary priests.' He admitted, at last, although with sore reluctance, that the time he lived in was, all things considered, the least intolerable and hateful."
SECTION IV.
An eagle governed the birds of the whole country of Ornithia. He had no other right, it must be allowed, than what he derived from his beak and claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey.
In his old age he was invaded by a flock of hungry vultures, who rushed from the depths of the North to scatter fear and desolation through his provinces. There appeared, just about this time, a certain owl, who was born in one of the most scrubby thickets of the empire, and who had long been known under the name of "luci-fugax," or light-hater. He possessed much cunning, and associated only with bats; and, while the vultures were engaged in conflict with the eagle, our politic owl and his party entered with great adroitness, in the character of pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the combatants.
The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and imposing physiognomy, was well formed to deceive them both.
He persuaded the eagles and vultures to suffer their claws to be a little pared, and just the points of their beaks to be cut off, in order to bring about perfect peace and reconciliation. Before this time, the owl had always said to the birds, "Obey the eagle"; afterwards, in consequence of the invasion, he had said to them, "Obey the vultures." He now, however, soon called out to them, "Obey me only." The poor birds did not know to whom to listen: they were plucked by the eagle, the vultures, and the owl and bats. "Qui habet aures, audiat."—"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."