This Fable shews the propensity of unguided youth to do evil, and points out the need of inculcating benignity of conduct upon their minds, and giving them a direction towards a manly and generous humanity, which in manhood will shew itself in actions and habits that cannot fail to do honour to themselves, and qualify them for any office in the service of their country. The contrary of all this will be found to predominate in society, when youth are suffered to go on with impunity, in indulging their wicked inclinations for cruelty, by which their minds are hardened and debased. This hard-heartedness in boys will grow into brutality and tyranny in man; and that cruelty which was at first inflicted upon poor dumb animals, will soon shew itself upon their fellows. The great man of this cast will tyrannize over those below him: these again will shew the same hateful disposition to their dependants, and so downwards to the lowest, who, guided only by ignorance, will give vent to their natural baseness, by goading and distressing the poor animals which are wretchedly toiling in their service. [Illustration] FINIS. NEWCASTLE: PRINTED BY EDWARD WALKER. Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed. This book often uses commas where periods might be expected, particularly when the next text might be expected to be in quotation marks, but is not. Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced. The first page is handwritten, with a woodcut illustration in the middle and a fingerprint between the words “his mark.” Every Fable begins with a framed illustration and a Title; many Fables end with an unframed illustration. Page viii: The illustration captioned "Thomas Beswick" is his signature. Page 36: In the caption of the illustration, “Brains” was crossed-out (by the artist). Page 76: In the caption of the illustration, the first “the” was crossed out (by the artist). Page 350: “equinamity” was printed that way. End of Project Gutenberg's The Fables of Æsop, and Others, by Thomas Bewick