What Nature wants (a phrase I much distrust)Extends to luxury, extends to lust:
Useful, I grant, it serves what life requires, But, dreadful too, the dark assassin hires.
B. Trade it may help, society extend.
P. But lures the pirate, and corrupts the friend.
B. It raises armies in a nation's aid.
P. But bribes a senate, and the land's betrayed.
In vain may heroes fight, and patriots rave;If secret gold sap on from knave to knave.
Once, we confess, beneath the patriot's cloak, From the cracked bag the dropping guinea spoke, And jingling down the back-stairs, told the crew, "Old Cato is as great a rogue as you."Blest paper-credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
Gold imped by thee can compass hardest things, Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;A single leaf shall waft an army o'er, Or ship off senates to a distant shore;A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow:
Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen, And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.
Oh! that such bulky bribes as all might see, Still, as of old, encumbered villainy!
Could France or Rome divert our brave designs, With all their brandies or with all their wines?
What could they more than knights and squires confound, Or water all the Quorum ten miles round?
A statesman's slumbers how this speech would spoil!
"Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil;Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door;A hundred oxen at your levee roar."
Poor Avarice one torment more would find;Nor could Profusion squander all in kind.
Astride his cheese Sir Morgan might we meet;And Worldly crying coals from street to street, Whom with a wig so wild, and mien so mazed, Pity mistakes for some poor tradesman crazed.
Had Colepepper's whole wealth been hops and hogs, Could he himself have sent it to the dogs?
His Grace will game: to White's a bull be led, With spurning heels and with a butting head.
To White's be carried, as to ancient games, Fair coursers, vases, and alluring dames.
Shall then Uxorio, if the stakes he sweep, Bear home six w****s, and make his lady weep?
Or soft Adonis, so perfumed and fine, Drive to St. James's a whole herd of swine?
Oh, filthy cheek on all industrious skill, To spoil the nation's last great trade, Quadrille!
Since then, my lord, on such a world we fall, What say you? B. Say? Why, take it, gold and all.
P. What Riches give us let us then inquire:
Meat, fire, and clothes. B. What more? P. Meat, clothes, and fire.
Is this too little? would you more than live?
Alas! 'tis more than Turner finds they give.
Alas! 'tis more than (all his visions past)Unhappy Wharton, waking, found at last!
What can they give? to dying Hopkins, heirs;To Chartres, vigour; Japhet, nose and ears?
Can they in gems bid pallid Hippia glow, In Fulvia's buckle ease the throbs below;Or heal, old Narses, thy obscener ail, With all th' embroid'ry plastered at thy tail?
They might (were Harpax not too wise to spend)Give Harpax' self the blessing of a friend;Or find some doctor that would save the life Of wretched Shylock, spite of Shylock's wife:
But thousands die, without or this or that, Die, and endow a college, or a cat.
To some, indeed, Heaven grants the happier fate, T' enrich a bastard, or a son they hate.
Perhaps you think the poor might have their part?
Bond damns the poor, and hates them from his heart:
The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule, That "every man in want is knave or fool:""God cannot love," says Blunt, with tearless eyes, "The wretch He starves"--and piously denies:
But the good bishop, with a meeker air, Admits, and leaves them--Providence's care.
Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, Each does but hate his neighbour as himself:
Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.
B. Who suffer thus, mere charity should own, Must act on motives powerful, though unknown.
P. Some war, some plague, or famine they foresee, Some revelation hid from you and me.
Why Shylock wants a meal, the cause is found--He thinks a loaf will rise to fifty pound.
What made directors cheat in South-Sea year?
To live on venison when it sold so dear.
Ask you why Phryne the whole auction buys?
Phryne foresees a general excise.
Why she and Sappho raise that monstrous sum?
Alas! they fear a man will cost a plum.
Wise Peter sees the world's respect for gold, And therefore hopes this nation may be sold:
Glorious ambition! Peter, swell thy store, And be what Rome's great Didius was before.
The crown of Poland, venal twice an age, To just three millions stinted modest Gage.
But nobler scenes Maria's dreams unfold, Hereditary realms, and worlds of gold.
Congenial souls! whose life one av'rice joins, And one fate buries in th' Asturian mines.
Much injured Blunt! why bears he Britain's hate?
A wizard told him in these words our fate:
"At length corruption, like a gen'ral flood (So long by watchful Ministers withstood), Shall deluge all; and av'rice, creeping on, Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun;Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks, Peeress and butler share alike the box, And judges job, and bishops bite the town, And mighty dukes pack cards for half-a-crown.
See Britain sunk in Lucre's sordid charms, And France revenged of Anne's and Edward's arms!"'Twas no Court-badge, great Scriv'ner! fired thy brain, Nor lordly luxury, nor City gain:
No, 'twas thy righteous end, ashamed to see Senates degen'rate, patriots disagree, And, nobly wishing party-rage to cease, To buy both sides, and give thy country peace.
"All this is madness," cries a sober sage:
But who, my friend, has reason in his rage?
"The ruling passion, be it what it will, The ruling passion conquers reason still."Less mad the wildest whimsey we can frame, Than even that passion, if it has no aim;For though such motives folly you may call, The folly's greater to have none at all.
Hear then the truth: "'Tis Heaven each passion sends, And different men directs to different ends.
