O happy pair, how well have you increased! What ills in Church and State have you redress'd! With teeth untried, and rudiments of claws, Your first essay was on your native laws: 200 Those having torn with ease, and trampled down, Your fangs you fasten'd on the mitred crown, And freed from God and monarchy your town. What though your native kennel[101] still be small, Bounded betwixt a puddle[102] and a wall; Yet your victorious colonies are sent Where the north ocean girds the continent. Quicken'd with fire below, your monsters breed In fenny Holland, and in fruitful Tweed: And, like the first, the last affects to be 210 Drawn to the dregs of a democracy. As, where in fields the fairy rounds are seen, A rank, sour herbage rises on the green; So, springing where those midnight elves advance, Rebellion prints the footsteps of the dance. Such are their doctrines, such contempt they show To Heaven above and to their prince below, As none but traitors and blasphemers know. God, like the tyrant of the skies, is placed, And kings, like slaves, beneath the crowd debased. 220 So fulsome is their food, that flocks refuse To bite, and only dogs for physic use. As, where the lightning runs along the ground, No husbandry can heal the blasting wound; Nor bladed grass, nor bearded corn succeeds, But scales of scurf and putrefaction breeds: Such wars, such waste, such fiery tracks of dearth Their zeal has left, and such a teemless earth, But, as the poisons of the deadliest kind Are to their own unhappy coasts confined; 230 As only Indian shades of sight deprive, And magic plants will but in Colchos thrive; So Presbytery and pestilential zeal Can only nourish in a commonweal. From Celtic woods is chased the wolfish crew; But ah! some pity even to brutes is due: Their native walks methinks they might enjoy, Curb'd of their native malice to destroy. Of all the tyrannies on human kind, The worst is that which persecutes the mind. 240 Let us but weigh at what offence we strike; 'Tis but because we cannot think alike. In punishing of this, we overthrow The laws of nations and of nature too. Beasts are the subjects of tyrannic sway, Where still the stronger on the weaker prey. Man only of a softer mould is made, Not for his fellows' ruin, but their aid: Created kind, beneficent, and free, The noble image of the Deity. 250