There are few words of which the reader believes himself better to know
the import, than of _poverty_; yet, whoever studies either the poets or
philosophers, will find such an account of the condition expressed by
that term as his experience or observation will not easily discover to
be true. 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 languor and by pain.
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