That a weaker animal should suck the blood of a stronger, without
resistance, is wholly improbable, and inconsistent with the regard for
self-preservation, so observable in every order and species of beings.
We must, therefore, necessarily endeavour after some figurative sense,
not liable to so insuperable an objection.
Were I to proceed in the same tenour of interpretation, by which I
explained the moon and the lilies, I might observe, that a horse is the
arms of H----. But how, then, does the horse suck the lion's blood!
Money is the blood of the body politick.--But my zeal for the present
happy establishment will not suffer me to pursue a train of thought,
that leads to such shocking conclusions. The idea is detestable, and
such as, it ought to be hoped, can enter into the mind of none but a
virulent republican, or bloody jacobite. There is not one honest man in
the nation unconvinced, how weak an attempt it would be to endeavour to
confute this insinuation; an insinuation which no party will dare to
abet, and of so fatal and destructive a tendency, that it may prove
equally dangerous to the author, whether true or false.
As, therefore, I can form no hypothesis, on which a consistent
interpretation may be built, I must leave these loose and unconnected
hints entirely to the candour of the reader, and confess, that I do not
think my scheme of explication just, since I cannot apply it, throughout
the whole, without involving myself in difficulties, from which the
ablest interpreter would find it no easy matter to get free.
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