Bernard Mandeville

“ The Building Trade is quite destroy’d,
Artificers are not employ’d;
No Limner for his Art is famed;
Stone-cutters, Carvers are not named.
Those, that remain’d, grown temp’rate, strive,
Not how to spend; but how to live ”

“ So Vice is beneficial found,
When it’s by Justice lopt, and bound;
Nay, where the People would be great,
As necessary to the State,
At Hunger is to make ’em eat.
Bare Vertue can’t make Nations live
In Splendour; they, that would revive
A Golden Age, must be as free,
For Acorns, as for Honesty
FINIS. ”

“ Pick-Pockets, Coiners, Quacks, Sooth-Sayers,
And all those, that, in Enmity
With down-right Working, cunningly
Convert to their own Use the Labour
Of their good-natur’d heedless Neighbour:
These were called Knaves ”