Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists/Fable LXXXI
Fab. LXXXI.
An Old weazle and Mice.
AN Old Weazle that was now almost past Mousing, try’d what she could do by her Wits, when she found she could live no longer upon the Square, and so Conveys her self into a Meal-Tub for the Mice to come to Her, since she could not go to Them. They came thick and threefold for a time, as she expected they should, till at last, One Experienc'd Stager that had Baffled Twenty Traps and Tricks Before, Discover’d the Plot, and quite Spoyld the Jest.
The Moral.
REFLEXION.
KNAVES live as Naturally upon Fools, as Spiders do upon Flyes, and the Want of Downright Force must be suppy'd by Art. But Time that Discovers the Truth of Things, lays open Frauds too and Double Dealings; and after that Discovery, there’s No Passing the same Trick upon the Mice and Rats here over again. A Body would think now that Reasonable Creatures should at least have the Wit of Vermine, and not run their Necks over and over into the same Noose: But in Despite of Claps and Surfeits, Men we fee will be Whoring and Faddling-on still. And the same Baite of Liberty and Property will serve for the Common People in sæcula sæculorum, Even after they have been Choak’d, Begger'd, and Poyson’d with it five Hundred times before.