s who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts
of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a
meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it
could not subsist? But after the public has reaped all the advantage of
their service, and they come to be oppressed with age, sickness, and
want, all their labours and the good they have done is forgotten, and all
the recompense given them is that they are left to die in great misery.
The richer sort are often endeavouring to bring the hire of labourers
lower, not only by their fraudulent practices, but by the laws which they
procure to be made to that effect, so that though it is a thing most
unjust in itself to give such small rewards to those who deserve so well
of the public, yet they have given those hardships the name and colour of
justice, by procuring laws to be made for regulating them.

"Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other
notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they
are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public,
only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can
find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they
have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and
labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as
they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances
established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the
representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws; yet
these wicked men, after they have, by a most insatiable covetousness,
divided that among themselves with which all the rest might have been
well supplied, are far from that happiness that is enjoyed among the
Utopians; for the use as well as the desire of money being extinguished,
much anxiety and great occasions of mischief is cut off with it, and who
does not see that the frauds, thefts, robberies, quarrels, tumults,
contentions, seditions, murders, treacheries, and witchcrafts, which are,
indeed, rather punished than restrained by the seventies of law, would
all fall off, if money were not any more valued by the world? Men's
fears, solicitudes, cares, labours, and watchings would all perish in the
same moment with the value of money; even poverty itself, for the relief
of which money seems most necessary, would fall. Bu