This is to Intimate, that where Rulers lay Snares, deal Falsly, and
Exercise Cruelty, All goes to Wrack both Publique and Private. All
Frauds are Cover’d and Gilded over with Specious Pretences, and Men are
Every jot as Easily Impos’d upon, as Birds, Beasts or Fishes; while the
Eagerness of our Appetites Suspends the Exercise of our Reason. A Treat,
a Woman, or a Bottle, is the same Thing to Us, that a Worm, a Gudgeon, a
Grain of Corn, or a piece of Flesh is to Those Animals. We Snap at the
Bait without ever Dreaming of the Hook, the Trap, or the Snare that goes
Along with it. Now what’s the Difference betwixt _Æsop’s_ Pretext here
for the _Building_ of a City, and the Cheats that we have heard of, for
the _Saving_ of a City. The Design was Destruction in Both, and that was
the Event on’t too. Religion, Liberty and Property were the Bait: Nay the
very Sound of the Words did the Bus’ness. The Common People will Chop
like Trouts at an Artificial Fly, and Dare like Larks under the Awe of a
Painted Hobby. ’Tis with Men just as it is with Birds and Fishes, There’s
not a Mortal of us, that will not Bite at some Bait or other, and we are
caught as Sillily too, as the _Bird_ was here in the _Net_.