Their happiness may dwindle away, & what was at outset Goal & prize, the provoker of all your wise revolution, 50 Will by subdivision disappear in course of atainment. When goods are[v]increas'd, mouths are[v]increas'd to devour them: If the famine be reliev'd this season in India, next dearth Will be a worse. Yoū know how one day Herschel acosted Súch a philanthropical Save-all, who claimed to acomplish Some greatest happiness for a greatest number; 'Attend, man; (Saíd-he) Resólve me anon one query: Suppose Adam and Eve First crēated on Earth but twice ten centuries ere Christ, That they gat four children in all, who liv'd, getting also Four to the pair: Had thus mankind ever equaly increast 60 By moderate families but doubling in each generation, How many souls would now be alive to revise the conundrum Of greatest happiness? No[v]answer? Well, 'tis a long sum. Say if on earth such a crowd could stand. No? Pray then imágine All earth's land as a plain, & all this company thereon, Piled together like peas in a pintpot: How many layers? No guess? Then how high the column? How far wu'd it extend Into the sky?--To the moon?--Further--To the sun?--To the sun! Pshaw! That column of happy men would reach up, as I fathom its height, Million dīameters of Neptune's infinit' orbit.' 70 My[v]objection annoys your kindly philanthropy?--'It proves 'Too much.'--Yes nature shows in that scrutiny bankrupt; Mere matter in deposit gives out. Yóu wish to determine No limit of future polities: your actual object Is to relieve suffering, to repeal injustice acruing From monied inheritance, which makes a nonentity potent For public mischief, who might, if usefully harness'd In common employment, have assisted social order. Why should Law give fifty talents where Nature alloys one? For money is the talent of supreme empery: Gold, Gold 80 Envieth all, getteth all, absorbeth, mastereth all things: It pusheth out & thrusteth away pitilessly the weak ones, Those ill-fated, opprest, unfortun'd needy: Beneath them Yawns the abyss. Down down they fall, as a stream on a mountain, With ceaseless cataract. None hearkeneth; only the silent Grave, that darkly devours their cry of desperate anguish. Spáre me the story; believe more feel this grief than avow it: 'Tis put aside from thought with death's incurable evil; Left for them, that assume mankind as cause, to lament it. And what if all Nature ratify this merciless outrage? 90 If her wonder of arch-wonders, her fair animal life, Her generate creatures, her motion'd warmblooded offspring, Haunters of the forest & royal country, her antler'd Mild-gazers, that keep silvan sabbath idly without end; Her herded galopers, sleeksided stately careerers