Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/390

342 had enough for himself. Vice and misery, pomp and poverty, power and obedience, would then be banished altogether.—It is for such a state as this, Irishmen, that I exhort you to prepare.—"A camel shall as soon pass through the eye of a needle, as a rich man enter the Kingdom of Heaven." This is not to be understood literally, Jesus Christ appears to me only to have meant that riches, have generally the effect of hardening and vitiating the heart, so has poverty. I think those people then are very silly, and cannot see one inch beyond their noses, who say that human nature is depraved; when at the same time wealth and poverty, those two great sources of crime, fall to the lot of a great majority of people; and when they see that people in moderate circumstances are always most wise and good.—People say that poverty is no evil—they have never felt it, or they would not think so. That wealth is necessary to encourage the arts— but are not the arts very inferior things to virtue and happiness—the man would be very dead to all generous feelings who would rather see pretty pictures and statues, than a million free and happy men.

It will be said, that my design is to make you dissatisfied with your present condition, and that I wish to raise a Rebellion. But how stupid and sottish must those men be, who think that violence and uneasiness of mind have any thing to do with forwarding the views of peace, harmony and happiness. They should know that nothing was so well-fitted to produce slavery, tyranny, and vice, as the violence which is attributed to the friends of liberty, and which the real friends of liberty are the only persons who disdain.—As to your being dissatisfied with your present condition, any thing