This Fable is too true a picture of the practices and friendships
of the world. We first enter into agreeable conversations, contract
likings, and form close intimacies and connections, which one would
think nothing could ever break up; but clashing interests at length
come in the way, and dissolve the charm. An unreasonable desire to
engross more than we can enjoy, is the bone of contention, which in
greater or less degrees sets mankind together by the ears. A jealous
thought, a mistaken word or look, is then sufficient to cancel all
former bonds: the league is broken, and the farce concludes like the
Dog and the Cat in the Fable, with biting and scratching out one
another’s eyes. The same kind of over-grasping selfishness which
operates so powerfully upon and blinds individuals, may with equal
truth be charged against all public associations or societies of men,
from the greatest to the least, when they are under the influence of
that mistaken patriotism, which, instead of applying its powers to
the improvement of what they already possess, seeks aggrandizement by
engrossing the colonies or privileges of their less powerful neighbours.
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