A fantastic scene between Captain Aubrey and a man named Fleming (and later Stephen Maturin), from The Thirteen-Gun Salute by Patrick O'Brian, to demonstrate the author's genius:
Aubrey: "What do you know about the last American war?"
Fleming: "Not very much, sir, except that the French and Spaniards joined in and were finely served out for doing so."
"Very true. Do you know how it began?"
"Yes, sir. It was about tea, which they did not choose to pay duty on. They called out No reproduction without copulation and tossed it into Boston Harbour.
Jack frowned, considered, and said, "Well, in any event they accomplished little or nothing at sea, that bout." He passed on the necessary allowance for dip and refraction to be made in working lunars, matters with which he was deeply familiar; but as her tuned his fiddle that evening he said, "Stephen, what was the Americans' cry in 1774?"
"No representation, no taxation."
"Nothing about copulation?"
"Nothing at all. At that period the mass of Americans were in favour of copulation."
"So it could not have been "No reproduction without copulation?"
"Why, my dear, that is the old natural philosopher's watch-word, as old as Aristotle, and quite erroneous. Do but consider how the hydra and her kind multiply without any sexual commerce of any sort. Leeuenhoek proved it long ago, but still the more obstinate repeat the cry, like so many parrots.
"Well, be damned to taxation, in any case."
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