niversal ingratitude. For justice exacts, that those by whom we are
most benefited should be most honoured. And what labour can be more
useful than that which procures to families and communities those
necessaries which supply the wants of nature, or those conveniencies by
which ease, security, and elegance, are conferred?

This is one of the innumerable theories which the first attempt to
reduce them into practice certainly destroys. If we estimate dignity by
immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest
science; yet we see the plough driven, the clod broken, the manure
spread, the seeds scattered, and the harvest reaped, by men whom those
that feed upon their industry will never be persuaded to admit into the
same rank with heroes, or with sages; and who, after all the confessions
which truth may extort in favour of their occupation, must be content to
fill up the lowest class of the commonwealth, to form the base of the
pyramid of subordination, and lie buried in obscurity themselves, while
they support all that is splendid, conspicuous, or exalted.

It will be found upon a closer inspection, that this part of the conduct
of mankind is by no means contrary to reason or equity. Remuneratory
honours are proportioned at once to the usefulness and difficulty of
performances, and are properly adjusted by comparison of the mental and
corporeal abilities, which they appear to employ. That work, however
necessary, which is carried on only by muscular strength and manual
dexterity, is not of equal esteem, in the consideration of rational
beings, with the tasks that exercise the intellectual powers, and
require the active vigour of imagination or the gradual and laborious
investigations of reason.

The merit of all manual occupations seems to terminate in the inventor;
and surely the first ages cannot be charged with ingratitude; since
those who civilized barbarians, and taught them how to secure themselves
from cold and hunger, were numbered amongst their deities. But these
arts once discovered by philosophy, and facilitated by experience, are
afterwards practised with very little assistance from the faculties of
the soul; nor is any thing necessary to the regular discharge of these
inferior duties, beyond that rude observation which the most sluggish
intellect may practise, and that industry which the stimulations of
necessity naturally enforce.

Yet though the refusal of statues and panegyrick to