We cry “He lacks e’en common tact.”  Alas! 
What hasty laws against ourselves we pass! 
For none is born without his faults:  the best
But bears a lighter wallet than the rest. 
A man of genial nature, as is fair,
My virtues with my vices will compare,
And, as with good or bad he fills the scale,
Lean to the better side, should that prevail: 
So, when he seeks my friendship, I will trim
The wavering balance in my turn for him. 
He that has fears his blotches may offend
Speaks gently of the pimples of his friend: 
For reciprocity exacts her dues,
And they that need excuse must needs excuse.

Now, since resentment, spite of all we do,
Will haunt us fools, and other vices too,
Why should not reason use her own just sense,
And square her punishments to each offence? 
Suppose a slave, as he removes the dish,
Licks the warm gravy or remains of fish,
Should his vexed master gibbet the poor lad,
He’d be a second Labeo, staring mad. 
Now take another instance, and remark
A case of madness, grosser and more stark. 
A friend has crossed you:—­’tis a slight affair;
Not to forgive it writes you down a bear:—­
You hate the man and his acquaintance fly,
As Ruso’s debtors hide from Ruso’s eye;
Poor victims, doomed, when that black pay-day’s come,
Unless by hook or crook they raise the sum,
To stretch their necks, like captives to the knife,
And listen to dull histories for dear life. 
Say, he has drunk too much, or smashed some ware,
Evander’s once, inestimably rare,
Or stretched before me, in his zeal to dine,
To snatch a chicken I had meant for mine;
What then? is that a reason he should seem
Less pleasant, less deserving my esteem? 
How could I treat him worse, were he to thieve,
Betray a secret, or a trust deceive?

Your men of words, who rate all crimes alike,
Collapse and founder, when on fact they strike: 
Sense, custom, all, cry out against the thing,
And high expedience, right’s perennial spring. 
When men first crept from out earth’s womb, like worms,
Dumb speechless creatures, with scarce human forms,
With nails or doubled fists they used to fight
For acorns or for sleeping-holes at night;
Clubs followed next; at last to arms they came,
Which growing practice taught them how to frame,
Till words and names were found, wherewith to mould
The sounds they uttered, and their thoughts unfold;
Thenceforth they left off fighting, and began
To build them cities, guarding man from man,
And set up laws as barriers against strife
That threatened person, property, or wife. 
’Twas fear of wrong gave birth to right, you’ll find,
If you but search the records of mankind. 
Nature knows good and evil, joy and grief,
But just and unjust are beyond her brief: 
Nor can philosophy, though finely spun,
By stress of logic prove the two things one,