Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/79

 What a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries one historian—The Strasburgers deemed it a diminution of their freedom to receive an imperial garrison—and so fell a prey to a French one.

The fate, says another, of the Strasburgers, may be a warning to all free people to save their money—They anticipated their revenues—brought themselves under taxes, exhausted their strength, and in the end became so weak a people, they had not strength to keep their gates shut, and so the French pushed them open.

Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, 'twas not the French—'twas pushed them open—The French indeed, who are ever upon the catch, when they saw the Strasburgers, men, women, and children,