he now suffers, some other being must suffer them; that, if
man were not man, some other being must be man, is a position arising
from his established notion of the scale of being. A notion to which
Pope has given some importance, by adopting it, and of which I have,
therefore, endeavoured to show the uncertainty and inconsistency. This
scale of being I have demonstrated to be raised by presumptuous
imagination, to rest on nothing at the bottom, to lean on nothing at the
top, and to have vacuities, from step to step, through which any order
of being may sink into nihility without any inconvenience, so far as we
can judge, to the next rank above or below it. We are, therefore, little
enlightened by a writer who tells us, that any being in the state of man
must suffer what man suffers, when the only question that requires to be
resolved is: Why any being is in this state. Of poverty and labour he
gives just and elegant representations, which yet do not remove the
difficulty of the first and fundamental question, though supposing the
present state of man necessary, they may supply some motives to content.

"Poverty is what all could not possibly have been exempted from, not
only by reason of the fluctuating nature of human possessions, but
because the world could not subsist without it; for, had all been rich,
none could have submitted to the commands of another, or the necessary
drudgeries of life; thence all governments must have been dissolved,
arts neglected, and lands uncultivated, and so an universal penury have
overwhelmed all, instead of now and then pinching a few. Hence, by the
by, appears the great excellence of charity, by which men are enabled,
by a particular distribution of the blessings and enjoyments of life, on
proper occasions, to prevent that poverty, which, by a general one,
omnipotence itself could never have prevented; so that, by enforcing
this duty, God, as it were, demands our assistance to promote universal
happiness, and to shut out misery at every door, where it strives to
intrude itself.

"Labour, indeed, God might easily have excused us from, since, at his
command, the earth would readily have poured forth all her treasures,
without our inconsiderable assistance; but, if the severest labour
cannot sufficiently subdue the malignity of human nature, what plots and
machinations, what wars, rapine, and devastation, what profligacy and
licentiousness, must have been the consequences of universal i