WHERE there's no difference in men's worth, Titles are jests.

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.
King and no King.

My lord comes forward; forward let him come ! Ye vulgar, at your peril, give him room! With what a decent pride he throws his eyes Above the man by three descents less wise! Let high birth triumph: what can be more great?

Nothing but merit in a low estate.

To virtue's humblest son let none prefer
Vice, though descended from the conqueror.
Shall men like figures pass for high or base,
Slight or important, only by their place?
They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt instead of their discharge.

WERE I So tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measur'd by my soul;
The mind's the standard of the man.

YOUNG. Satires, sat. 1.

WATTS.

Lyric Poems, part ii.

WHAT tho' no gaudy titles grac'd my birth! Titles, the servile courtier's lean reward! Sometimes the pay of virtue, but more oft The hire which greatness gives to slaves and syco

phants;

Yet

Yet heaven, that made me honest, made me more
Than ever king did when he made a lord.

WHOE'ER amidst the sons

Of
reason, valour, liberty, and virtue,
Displays distinguish'd merit, is a noble
Of nature's own creating..

THOMSON.

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HONOUR and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made;
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade,
The cobler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
What differ more, you cry, than crown and cowl?
I'll tell you, friend;
friend; a wise man and a fool.
Worth makes the man, and want of it the

fellow,

The rest is all but leather or prunella.

Stuck o'er with titles and hung round with strings,

That thou may'st be by kings, or whores of kings,
Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race,

In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece :
But by your father's worth if yours you rate,
Count me those only who were good and great.
Go! if your antient, but ignoble blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the

flood,

Go

Go, and pretend your family is young;
Nor own your fathers have been fools so long,
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.

IF
you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of
corn; and if (instead of each picking where, and
what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted,
and no more) you shall see ninety-nine of them.
gathering all they get into a heap; reserving no-
thing for themselves, but the chaff and refuse;
keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest
perhaps and worst pigeon of the flock; sitting
round and looking on, all the winter, whilst this
one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting
it; and, if a pigeon more hardy or hungry than
the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the
others instantly flying upon it, and tearing it to
pieces: if you should see this, you would see
nothing more, than what is every day practised and
established among men. Among men you see the
ninety and nine, toiling and scraping together a
heap of superfluities for one; getting nothing for
themselves all the while, but a little of the coarsest
of the provision, which their own labour pro-
duces; and this one oftentimes the feeblest and
worst of the whole set, a child, a woman, a mad-

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man,

man, or a fool; looking quietly on, while they see the fruits of all their labour spent or spoiled; and if one of them take or touch a particle of it, the others join against him, and hang him for the theft.

THE most obvious division of society is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole busines of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burthens of the poor. In a state of nature it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labours. In a state of artificial society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labour most, enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labour not at all, have the greatest number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this strange and ridiculous beyond expression. We scarce believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being the least

surprized. I suppose that there are in Great Britain upwards of an hundred thousand people employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal mines; these unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of the sun; they are buried in the bowels of the earth; there they work at a severe aad dismal

task,

PALEY.

Principles of Philosophy, b. iii ch.i.

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