The lowest condition of life, with freedom attending it, is better than the most exalted station under a restraint. Æsop and Phædrus, who had both felt the bitter effects of slavery, though the latter of them had the good fortune to have the mildest prince that ever was for his master, cannot forbear taking all opportunities to express their great abhorrence of servitude, and their passion for liberty, upon any terms whatsoever. Indeed, a state of slavery, with whatever seeming grandeur and happiness it may be attended, is yet so precarious a thing, that he must want sense, honour, courage, and all manner of virtue, who can endure to prefer it in his choice. A man who has so little honour as to bear to be a slave, when it is in his power to prevent or redress it, would make no scruple to cut the throats of his fellow creatures, or to do any wickedness that the wanton unbridled will of his tyrannical master could suggest. FABLE XCVIII. [Illustration: THE WOOD AND THE CLOWN.] A country Fellow came one day into the Wood, and looked about him with some concern; upon which the Trees, with a curiosity natural to some other creatures, asked him what he wanted.--He replied--'That he only wanted a piece of wood to make a handle to his hatchet.' Since that was all, it was voted unanimously, that he should have a piece of good, sound, tough ash. But he had no sooner received and fitted it for his purpose, than he began to lay about him unmercifully, and to hack and hew without distinction, felling the noblest trees in all the forest. Then the Oak is said to have spoke thus to the Beech in a low whisper,--'Brother, we must take it for our pains.' APPLICATION. No people are more justly liable to suffer than they who furnish their enemies with any kind of assistance. It is generous to forgive; it is enjoined us by religion to love our enemies; but he that trusts an enemy, much more contributes to the strengthening and arming of him, may almost depend upon repenting him for his inadvertent benevolence; and has, moreover, this to add to his distress, that, when he might have prevented it, he brought his misfortune upon himself by his own credulity.