Instead of the meanness,
distress, complaint, anxiety, and dependance,
which have hitherto been combined in his ideas of
poverty, he will read of content, innocence, and
cheerfulness, of health and safety, tranquillity and
freedom; of pleasures not known but to men
unencumbered with possessions; and of sleep that
sheds his balsamick anodynes only on the cottage.
Such are the blessings to be obtained by the
resignation of riches, that kings might descend from
their thrones, and generals retire from a triumph,
only to slumber undisturbed in the elysium of
poverty.
If these authors do not deceive us, nothing can
be more absurd than that perpetual contest for
wealth which keeps the world in commotion; nor
any complaints more justly censured than those
which proceed from want of the gifts of fortune,
which we are taught by the great masters of moral
wisdom to consider as golden shackles, by which
the wearer is at once disabled and adorned; as
luscious poisons which may for a time please the
palate, but soon betray their malignity by langour and
by pain.
It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy
unenvied, to be healthful without physick, and
secure without a guard; to obtain from the bounty
of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled
to procure by the help of artists and attendants,
of flatterers and spies.
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