Each others lust and vanity,While other millions were employed
To see their handiworks destroyed;
They furnished half the universe,
Yet had more work than labourers.
Some with vast stocks, and little pains,
Jumped into business of great gains;
And some were damned to scythes and spades,
And all those hard laborious trades
Where willing wretches daily sweat
And wear out strength and limbs, to eat;
While others followed mysteries
To which few folks, bind prentices,
That want no stock but that of brass,
And may set up without a cross—
As sharpers, parasites, pimps, players,
Pickpockets, coiners, quacks, soothsayers,
And all those that in enmity
With downright working, cunningly
Convert to their own use the labour
Of their good-natured heedless neighbour.
These were called knaves; but bar the name,
The grave industrious were the same:
All trades and places knew some cheat,
No calling was without deceit.
* * * * *
Thus every part was full of vice,
Yet the whole mass a paradise:
Flattered in peace, and feared in wars,
They were th' esteem of foreigners,
And lavish of their wealth and lives,
The balance of all other hives.
Such were the blessings of that state;
Their crimes conspired to make them great.
* * * * *
The root of evil, avarice,
That damned, ill-natured, baneful vice,
Was slave to prodigality,
That noble sin; whilst luxury
Employed a million of the poor,
And odious pride a million more;
Envy itself, and vanity,
Were ministers of industry;
Their darling folly—fickleness
In diet, furniture, and dress—
That strange, ridiculous vice, was made
The very wheel that turned the trade.
Their laws and clothes were equally
Objects of mutability;
For what was well done for a time,
In half a year became a crime.
* * * * *
How vain, is mortal happiness!
Had they but known the bounds of bliss,
And that perfection here below
Is more than gods can well bestow,
The grumbling brutes had been content
With ministers and government.
But they, at every ill success,
Like creatures lost without redress,
Cursed politicians, armies, fleets;
While every one cried, 'Damn the cheats!'
And would, though conscious of his own,
In others barbarously bear none.
One that had got a princely store
By cheating master, king, and poor,
Dared cry aloud, 'The land must sink
For all its fraud'; and whom d'ye think
The sermonizing rascal chid?
A glover that sold lamb for kid!
The least thing was not done amiss,
Or crossed the public business,
But all the rogues cried brazenly,
'Good Gods, had we but honesty!'
Mercury smiled at th' impudence,
And others called it want of sense,
Always to rail at what they loved:
But Jove, with indignation moved,
At last in anger swore he'd rid
The bawling hive of fraud; and did.
The very moment it departs,
And honesty fills all their hearts,
There shews 'em, like th' instructive tree,
Those crimes which they're ashamed to see,
Which now in silence they confess
By blushing at their ugliness;
Like children that would hide their faults
And by their colour own their thoughts,
Imagining when they're looked upon,
That others see what they have done.
But, O ye Gods! what consternation!
How vast and sudden was th' alternation!
In half an hour, the nation round,
Meat fell a penny in the pound.
* * * * *
Now mind the glorious hive, and see
How honesty and trade agree.
The show is gone; it thins apace,
And looks with quite
