O let not those, whom honest servants bless,
With cruel hands their age infirm oppress;
Forget their service past, their former truth,
And all the cares and labours of their youth.
This Fable is intended to reprove the ingratitude too common among
mankind, which leaves the faithful servant to want and wretchedness,
after he has spent the prime of his life in our service for a bare
subsistence. Where slavery is allowed, the laws compel the master to
provide for the worn-out slave; and where there is no law to enforce
the debt of gratitude, none but those who are insensible to all the
finer feelings of humanity will neglect it. Those who forget past
services, and treat their faithful servants or friends unkindly or
injuriously, when they are no longer of use to them, however high
their pride, are unworthy of the name of gentleman. They are, indeed,
commonly of an upstart breed, with whom the failure of human nature
itself is imputed as a crime; and servants and dependents, instead of
being considered their fellow-men, are treated like brutes for not
being more than men. The imprudence of this conduct is equal to its
wickedness, inasmuch as it directly tends to extinguish the honest
desire to please and to act faithfully, in the younger servants,
when they see that worn-out merit thus goes unrewarded. Humanity and
gratitude are the greatest ornaments of the human mind, and when they
are extinguished, every generous and noble sentiment perishes along
with them.
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