The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits

Adulterated with a quarter
Of good-for-nothing stones and mortar;
Though Flail had little cause to mutter
Who sold the other salt for butter.
Justice blind against the poor

JUSTICE herself, famed for fair dealing,
By blindness had not lost her feeling;
Her left hand, which the scales should hold,
Had often dropped them, bribed with gold;
And, though she seemed impartial,
Where punishment was physical,
Pretended to a regular course,
In murder, and all crimes of force;
Though some, first pilloried for cheating,
Were hanged in hemp of their own beating;
Yet, it was thought, the sword she bore
Checked only the desperate and the poor;
That, urged by mere necessity,
Were tied up to the wretched tree
For crimes, which did not deserve that fate,
But to secure the rich and great.
Vice

THUS every part was full of vice,
Yet the whole mass a paradise;
Flattered in peace, and feared in wars,
They were the esteem of foreigners,
And lavish of their wealth and lives,
The balance of all other hives.
Such were the blessings of that state:
Their crimes conspired to make them great:
(F.) And virtue, who from politics
Had learned a thousand cunning tricks,
Was, by their happy influence,
Made friends with vice: And ever since,
(G.) The worst of all the multitude
Did something for the common good.
Statecraft

This? was the statecraft that maintained
The? whole, of which each part complained:
This?, as in music harmony
Made? jarrings in the main agree;