natural and rational desires for better enjoyment than is now found, so
that self-love would find not occasion for envy, or repining at a
brother's prosperity.

The unceasing desire to become richer would be, however, but a
mitigated evil, if men sought only wealth by production. The
aggravation of the case is, that they whom the desire most impels, seek
the increase of their own store, not by producing, but by contriving to
turn to their own stock the avails of the industry of others. Our
young men, in deplorable numbers, slide into the persuasion, that any
means of living and thriving are better than productive industry.
Hence the rush into trade, the professions, into speculations, where
the hazards are such, that the cool calculations of pure avarice would
rather incline a man to prefer the prospect of growing rich by digging
the earth. So much the preference of contrivance to labor overmaster
the mastering desire to become rich.

But there is a strange hankering after whatever is of the nature of a
lottery. So the prizes are but splendid, no matter, if they are but
few compared with the blanks. We are given to presuming each on his
own good fortune. "Nothing venture, nothing have," has become a
proverb. So agriculture is treated as if it had no rewards, because
one ventures so little by engaging therein. And one might almost think
that the conscious earth resented the indignity.

Aided by Philosophy, we shall argue on this matter thus: All cannot
live by their wits; the many must produce with the hands; and, the
greater the part who shuffle off the charge, the more heavily it falls
on others. The first law given to man in innocency, was, to keep the
garden and till it; the first after the loss of innocency, "In the