not to make “a beast of himself;” which is very unfair towards the beasts, who are no drunkards, and behave themselves as nature intended.  A horse has no habit of drinking; he does not get a red face with it.  The stag does not go reeling home to his wives.  On the other hand, we are desired to be as faithful as a dog, as bold as a lion, as tender as a dove; as if the qualities denoted by these epithets were not to be found among ourselves.  But above all, the bee is the argument.  Is not the honey-bee, we are asked, a wise animal?—­We grant it.—­“Doth he not improve each passing hour?”—­He is pretty busy, it must be owned—­as much occupied at eleven, twelve, and one o’clock, as if his life depended on it:—­Does he not lay up stores?—­He does.—­Is he not social?  Does he not live in communities?—­There can be no doubt of it.—­Well, then, he has a monarchical government; and does not that clearly show that a monarchy is the instinct of nature?  Does it prove, by an unerring rule, that the only form of government in request among the obeyers of instinct, is the only one naturally fitted for man?

In answering the spirit of this question, we shall not stop to inquire how far it is right as to the letter, or how many different forms of polity are to be found among other animals, such as the crows, the beavers, the monkeys; neither shall we examine how far instinct is superior to reason, nor why the example of man himself is to go for nothing.  We will take for granted, that the bee is the wisest animal of all, and that it is a judicious thing to consider his manners and customs, with reference to their adoption by his inferiors, who keep him in hives.  This naturally leads us to inquire, whether we could not frame all our systems of life after the same fashion.  We are busy, like the bee; we are gregarious, like him; we make provision against a rainy day; we are fond of flowers and the country; we occasionally sting, like him; and we make a great noise about what we do.  Now, if we resemble the bee in so many points, and his political instinct is so admirable, let us reflect what we ought to become in other respects, in order to attain to the full benefit of his example.

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But we have not yet got half through the wonders, which are to modify human conduct by the example of this wise, industrious, and monarch-loving people.  Marvellous changes must be effected, before we have any general pretension to resemble them, always excepting in the aristocratic particular.  For instance, the aristocrats of the hive, however unmasculine in their ordinary mode of life, are the only males.  The working-classes, like the sovereign, are all females!  How are we to manage this?  We must convert, by one sudden meta-morphosis, the whole body of our agricultural and manufacturing population into women!  Mrs. Cobbett must displace her husband, and tell us all about Indian corn.  There must be not a man in