Men that are Impatient under Imaginary Afflictions, change commonly
for Worse, as the _Daw_ did here in the Fable, that Threw himself into
a Starving Necessity, rather then he would Submit to the Tolerable
Inconvenience of an Easie Restraint. This was a _Republican Daw_, that
_Kaw’d_ for Liberty, not Understanding that he that Lives under the
Bondage of Laws, is in a State of Freedom: And that Popular Liberty, when
it passes Those Bounds, is the most Scandalous Sort of Slavery. Nothing
would serve him, but he must be at his Own Disposal, and so away he goes,
carries his String along with him, and Shackles Himself. This is just the
Humour and the Fate of Froward Subjects. They Fancy themselves Uneasie
under the Errors of a Male Administration of Government, when their
Quarrel strikes, in truth, at the very Root and Conditions of Government
it self. It is as Impossible for a Government to be without Faults, as
for a Man to be so. But Faults or No Faults, it comes yet much to a Case;
for where they cannot Find ’em, they can Create them; And there goes no
more to’t neither, then the Calling of Necessary Justice by the Name of
Oppression. And what’s the End on’t, more then this now? _They Run away
from their Masters into the Woods, and there, with_ Æsop_’s Daw, they
either Starve, or Hang Themselves_.