"Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret."
"For nature driven out, with proud disdain,
All powerful goddess, will return again."
The election of a town constable, exhibits the violence of _Lunar
Politics_ to be much the same as the terrestrial, and seems to have
some allusion to an existing and important controversy amongst
ourselves. The _prostitution of the press_ is satirized by the
story of a number of boys dressed in black and white--wearing the
badges of the party to which they respectively belong, and each
provided with a syringe and two canteens, the one filled with rose
water, and the other with a black, offensive, fluid: the rose water
being squirted at the favourite candidates and voters--the other fluid
on the opposite party. All these were under regular discipline, and at
the word of command discharged their syringes on friend or foe, as the
case might be.
The "_glorious uncertainty of the law_" (proverbial with us,)
falls also under notice. In Morosofia, it seems, a favourite mode of
settling private disputes, whether concerning person, character, or
property, is by the employment of prize fighters who hire themselves
to the litigants:--
"And out of foreign controversies
By aiding both sides, fill their purses:
But have no int'rest in the cause
For which th' engage and wage the laws
Nor farther prospect than their pay
Whether they lose or win the day.
Pages:
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268