Let us now view the other species of the rich, those who devote their time and fortunes to idleness and pleasure.  How much happier are they?  The pleasures which are agreeable to nature are within the reach of all, and therefore can form no distinction in favor of the rich.  The pleasures which art forces up are seldom sincere, and never satisfying.  What is worse, this constant application to pleasure takes away from the enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burdensome and laborious business.  It has consequences much more fatal.  It produces a weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders, and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the other.  The pleasures of such men are scarcely felt as pleasures; at the same time that they bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too severely.  The mind has its share of the misfortune; it grows lazy and enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing, real happiness.  The poor by their excessive labor, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set upon a level, and rendered equally ignorant of any knowledge which might conduce to their happiness.  A dismal view of the interior of all civil society!  The lower part broken and ground down by the most cruel oppression; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing worse evils on themselves than their tyranny could possibly inflict on those below them.  Very different is the prospect of the natural state.  Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be sensible of no other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very moderate degree of labor; therefore there is no slavery.  Neither is there any luxury, because no single man can supply the materials of it.  Life is simple, and therefore it is happy.

I am conscious, my lord, that your politician will urge in his defence, that this unequal state is highly useful.  That without dooming some part of mankind to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life could not be exercised.  But I demand of this politician, how such arts came to be necessary?  He answers, that civil society could not well exist without them.  So that these arts are necessary to civil society, and civil society necessary again to these arts.  Thus are we running in a circle, without modesty, and without end, and making one error and extravagance an excuse for the other.  My sentiments about these arts and their cause, I have often discoursed with my friends at large.  Pope has expressed them in good verse, where he talks with so much force of reason and elegance of language, in praise of the state of nature: 

   “Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid,
    Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade.”