ofession, to make the least step without
their advice and assistance. Thus, by confining to themselves the
knowledge of the foundation of all men's lives and properties, they have
reduced all mankind into the most abject and servile dependence. We are
tenants at the will of these gentlemen for everything; and a
metaphysical quibble is to decide whether the greatest villain breathing
shall meet his deserts, or escape with impunity, or whether the best man
in the society shall not be reduced to the lowest and most despicable
condition it affords. In a word, my lord, the injustice, delay,
puerility, false refinement, and affected mystery of the law are such,
that many who live under it come to admire and envy the expedition,
simplicity, and equality of arbitrary judgments. I need insist the less
on this article to your lordship, as you have frequently lamented the
miseries derived to us from artificial law, and your candor is the more
to be admired and applauded in this, as your lordship's noble house has
derived its wealth and its honors from that profession.

Before we finish our examination of artificial society, I shall lead
your lordship into a closer consideration of the relations which it
gives birth to, and the benefits, if such they are, which result from
these relations. 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 business 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 burdens of the poor. In a
state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are
in proportion to his labors. In a state of artificial society, it is a
law as constant and as invariable, that those who labor most enjoy the
fewest things; and that those who labor 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 in the
least surprised. I suppose that there are in Great Britain upwards of a
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