he 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.

* * * * *

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 Nottingham, except the Duke of Newcastle; and
he trembling lest the Queen should send for him. The tailors, bakers,
carpenters, gardeners, must all be Mrs. Tailors and Mrs. Bakers. The
very name of John Smith must go out. The Directory must be Amazonian.
This commonalty of women must also be, at one and the same time, the
operatives, the soldiers, the virgins, and the legislators of the
country! They must make all we want, fight all our enemies, and even get
up a Queen for us when necessary; for the sovereigns of the hive are
often of singular origin, being manufactured! literally "made to order,"
and that too by dint of their eating! They are fed and stuffed into
royalty! The receipt is, to take any ordinary female bee in its infancy,
put it into a royal cradle or cell, and feed it with a certain kind of
jelly; upon which its shape alters into that of sovereignty, and her
Majesty issues forth, royal by the grace of stomach. This is no fable,
as the reader may see on consulting any good history of bees. In
general, several Queen-bees are made at a time, in case of accidents;
but each, on emerging from her apartment, seeks to destroy the other,
and one only remains living in one hive. The others depart at the head
of colonies, like Dido.

To sum