Cleo. By thinking meanly of things, I once had strange blundering notions concerning foreign wars: I thought that many of them arose from trifling causes, magnified by politicians for their own ends; that the most ruinous misunderstandings between states and kingdoms might spring from the hidden malice, folly, or caprice of one man; that many of them had been owing to the private quarrels, piques, resentments, and the haughtiness of the chief ministers of the respective nations, that were the sufferers; and that what is called personal hatred between princes seldom was more at first, than either an open or secret animosity which the two great favourites of those courts had against one another: but now I have learned to derive those things from higher causes. I am reconciled likewise to the luxury of the voluptuous, which I used to be offended at, because now I am convinced that the money of most rich men, is laid out with the social design of promoting arts and sciences, and that in the most expensive undertakings their principal aim is the employment of the poor. Hor. These are lengths indeed. Cleo. I have a strong aversion to satire, and detest it every whit as much as you do: the most instructive writings to understand the world, and penetrate into the heart of man, I take to be addresses, epithets, dedications, and above all, the preambles to patents, of which I am making a large collection. Hor. A very useful undertaking! Cleo. But to remove all your doubts of my conversion, I will show you some easy rules I have laid down for young beginners. Hor. What to do? Cleo. To judge of mens actions by the lovely system of Lord Shaftsbury, in a manner diametrically opposite to that of the Fable of the Bees. Hor. I do not understand you. Cleo. You will presently. I have called them rules, but they are rather examples from which the rules are to be gathered: as for instance, if we see an industrious poor woman, who has pinched her belly, and gone in rags for a considerable time to save forty shillings, part with her money to put out her son at six years of age to a chimney-sweeper; to judge of her charitably, according to the system of the social virtues, we must imagine, that though she never paid for the sweeping of a chimney in her life, she knows by experience, that for want of this necessary cleanliness the broth has been often spoiled, and many a chimney has been set on fire, and therefore to do good in her generation, as far as she is able, she gives up her all, both offspring and estate, to assist in preventing the several mischiefs that are often occasioned by great quantities of soot disregarded; and, free from selfishness, sacrifices her only son to the most wretched employment for the public welfare. Hor. You do not vie I see with Lord Shaftsbury, for loftiness of subjects.