e, that a vice which keeps so firm a hold
upon human nature, and governs it with so unlimited a tyranny, since it
cannot be wholly eradicated, ought at least to be confined to particular
objects, to thrift and penury, to private fraud and extortion, and never
suffered to prey upon the public; and should certainly be rejected as the
most unqualifying circumstance for any employment, where bribery and
corruption can possibly enter.

If the mischiefs of this vice, in a public station, were confined to
enriching only those particular persons employed, the evil would be more
supportable; but it is usually quite otherwise. When a steward defrauds
his lord, he must connive at the rest of the servants, while they are
following the same practice in their several spheres; so that in some
families you may observe a subordination of knaves in a link downwards to
the very helper in the stables, all cheating by concert, and with
impunity: And even if this were all, perhaps the master could bear it
without being undone; but it so happens, that for every shilling the
servant gets by his iniquity, the master loses twenty; the perquisites
of servants being but small compositions for suffering shopkeepers to
bring in what bills they please.[3] It is exactly the same thing in a
state: an avaricious man in office is in confederacy with the whole
_clan_ of his district or dependence, which in modern terms of art is
called, "To live, and let live;" and yet _their_ gains are the smallest
part of the public's loss. Give a guinea to a knavish land-waiter, and
he shall connive at the merchant for cheating the Queen of an hundred. A
brewer gives a bribe to have the privilege of selling drink to the Navy;
but the fraud is ten times greater than the bribe, and the public is at
the whole loss.[4]

Moralists make two kinds of avarice; that of Catiline, _alieni appetens,
sui profusus;_[5] and the other more generally understood by that name;
which is, the endless desire of hoarding: But I take the former to be
more dangerous in a state, because it mingles well with ambition, which I
think the latter cannot; for though the same breast may be capable of
admitting both, it is not able to cultivate them; and where the love of
heaping wealth prevails, there is not in my opinion, much to be
apprehended from ambition. The disgrace of that sordid vice is sooner apt
to spread than any other, and is always attended with the hatred and
scorn of the people: so th