Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/127

N° 27. same practice in their several spheres: so that in some families you may observe a subordination of knaves, in a link downward to the very helper in the stables, all cheating by concert, and with impunity. And even if this were all, perhaps the master could bear it without being undone; but it so happens, that for every shilling the servant gets by iniquity, the master loses twenty; the perquisites of servants being but small compositions for suffering shopkeepers to bring in what bills they please. It is exactly the same thing in a state: an avaricious man in office, is in confederacy with the whole clan of his district or dependance; which in modern terms of art, is called to live and let live; and yet their gains are the smallest part of the publick's loss. Give a guinea to a knavish land waiter, and he shall connive at the merchant for cheating tht queen of a hundred. A brewer gives a bribe to have the privilege of selling drink to the navy; but the fraud is a hundred times greater than the bribe, and the publick is at the whole loss.

Moralists make two kinds of avarice; that of Cataline, alieni appetens, sui profusus; and the other more generally understood by that name, which is the endless desire of hoarding. But I take the former to be more dangerous in a state, because it mingles with ambition, which I think the latter cannot; for, although the same breast may be capable of admitting both, it is not able to cultivate them; and where the love of heaping wealth prevails, there is not in my opinion much to be apprehended from ambition. The disgrace of that sordid vice is sooner apt to spread than any other; and is Rh