The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Another bagatelle had a decidedly darker theme. It involved a lion, king of the beasts, who numbered among his subjects a body of faithful dogs, devoted to his person and government, and through whose assistance he had greatly extended his dominions. The lion, however, influenced by evil counselors, took an aversion to the dogs, condemned them unheard, and ordered his tigers, leopards, and panthers to attack and destroy them. The brave dogs, dismayed at their master’s change of heart, reluctantly defended themselves—but not without internal dissent. “A few among them, of a mongrel race, derived from a mixture with wolves and foxes, corrupted by royal promises of great rewards, deserted the honest dogs and joined their enemies.” After a sore struggle the dogs fought off the tigers, leopards, and panthers. In their victory they refused to suffer the return of the mongrels—who thereupon applied to the lion to fulfill the promises he had made. The wolves and the foxes supported their appeal and urged that every loyal subject of the lion should be taxed to that end. Only the horse, with a boldness and freedom that became the nobility of his nature, spoke against the mongrels and the wolves and foxes. The lion, he said, had been misled by bad ministers to war unjustly on his faithful subjects. Royal promises, when made to encourage subjects to act for the public good, should indeed be honored; but if made to encourage betrayal and mutual destruction, they were wicked and void fr...