But I will answer in your folly’s mode. The justice, then, of Nature’s laws you doubt, Forgetting they are fixed for general good, And not for individual. These laws, In their effects, you praise as very good; Yet, in their causes, call the most unjust. The fertile fields, with grain for man’s support, Are nourished by a miasmatic air, That, sickening but a few, feeds all the world. While, were the air all pure, a few were well, And millions starving. In the tropics, too, The scenes you deprecate, themselves but cause The very beauties you admire. Unjust, You would enjoy effects without a cause. The goods of Nature often take their rise From what to man proves evil. For the goods, He makes his mind to meet the evils; then Can he complain, or think it hard to bear? But Nature’s dealings towards Man are just. He knows that he is free, and Nature not; If he opposes Nature’s laws and falls, Is Nature to be blamed? The widow’s cot Is frail; the laws of general good require A storm; it comes, and shattered falls the cot. Should God have saved it by a miracle, Then all His people could demand the same, And Earth would soon become the bar of God, God may exert a special providence, But Man may not detect it, as the rule Invariable of life, and still be free; For he were thus compelled to seek the good. Then Nature, over Man, holds not a tyranny, But keeps the perfect pandect of her laws, And Man is free to obey them, or oppose.