Genre:

Regular Feature, Letter, Spoof

Subjects:

Evolution, Menageries, Politics

    The administration has used spies to detect treason everywhere. Believes that 'if the civilization of brutes had kept pace with the wishes of the Ministers, that every ass and every goose in the creation would join in the universal chorus: and be made spies, or pensioners at least [...]. But we cannot urge on the course of nature beyond the customary celerity of its unceasing wheels; and the geese must continue to hiss even Princes as they pass, and the ass to bray rudely his grievances even in the ears of the Ministers' (375). Observes that 'England must not expect to escape the consequences of having raised to power men who can only continue there by the degradation of the nation over which they preside. Suppose, Toby, the sapient pig, had been born the hereditary monarch of this land, should we not have expected that his privy counsellors, and his prime ministers, and his secretaries of state, and his bishops, and his archbishops, and his deacons, would have been congenial swine! [...] Pigs, in such a case, would have been objects of peculiar veneration. [...] Or suppose the ancestors of Signor Jacki, the monkey rope-dancer, had been seated on a throne? What a fortunate event for the young sprigs of nobility who render Bond-street the retreat of apes more fantastical than the inhabitants of Borneo! Every one of them would have been hereditary privy counsellors; and an ourang outang [...] would have been instantly elected Lord Chief Justice' (376–77). Ironically considers that, given that 'like loves like', it is astonishing that the present administration has found servants in disreputable spies (377).