lished fruit of all
countries; while another asked, with a reeling eye, whether they need
go far to seek when a God had condescended to preside over the Grape!
In short, there was not a fruit which flourishes that did not find
its votaries. Strange to say, another foreign product, imported from a
neighbouring country famous for its barrenness, counted the most; and
the fruit faction which chiefly frightened the Vraibleusian Government
was an acid set, who crammed themselves with Crab-apples.

It was this party which first seriously and practically conceived the
idea of utterly abolishing the ancient custom of eating pine-apples.
While they themselves professed to devour no other fruit save crabs,
they at the same time preached the doctrine of an universal fruit
toleration, which they showed would be the necessary and natural
consequence of the destruction of the old monopoly. Influenced by
these representations, the great body of the people openly joined the
Crab-apple men in their open attacks. The minority, who still retained
a taste for pines, did not yield without an arduous though ineffectual
struggle. During the riots occasioned by this rebellion the Hall of
Audience was broken open, and the miraculous Statue, which was reputed
to have a great passion for pine-apples, dashed to the ground. The
Managers were either slain or disappeared. The whole affairs of the
kingdom were conducted by a body called 'the Fruit Committee;' and thus
a total revolution of the Government of Vraibleusia was occasioned by
the prohibition of foreign pine-apples. What an argument in favour of
free-trade!

Every fruit, except that one which had so recently been supported by
the influence of authority and the terrors of law, might now be seen
and devoured in the streets of Hubbabub. In one corner men were sucking
oranges, as if they had lived their whole lives on salt: in another,
stuffing pumpkin, like cannibals at their first child. Here one took in
at a mouthful a bunch of grapes, from which might have been pressed
a good quart. Another was lying on the ground from a surfeit of
mulberries. The effect of this irrational excess will be conceived by
the judicious reader. Calcutta itself never suffered from a cholera
morbus half so fearful. Thousands were dying. Were I Thucydides or
Boccaccio, I would write pages on this plague. The commonwealth itself
must soon have yielded its ghost, for all order had ceased throughout
the island ever si