If the town be taken, I win 5,000 pounds and lose 2,500 pounds.

This is gaming by rule, and in such a knot it is impossible to lose;
for if it is in any man's or company of men's power, by any artifice
to alter the odds, it is in their power to command the money out of
every man's pocket, who has no more wit than to venture.



OF FOOLS.



Of all persons who are objects of our charity, none move my
compassion like those whom it has pleased God to leave in a full
state health and strength, but deprived of reason to act for
themselves. And it is, in my opinion, one of the greatest scandals
upon the understanding of others to mock at those who want it. Upon
this account I think the hospital we call Bedlam to be a noble
foundation, a visible instance of the sense our ancestors had of the
greatest unhappiness which can befall humankind; since as the soul
in man distinguishes him from a brute, so where the soul is dead
(for so it is as to acting) no brute so much a beast as a man. But
since never to have it, and to have lost it, are synonymous in the
effect, I wonder how it came to pass that in the settlement of that
hospital they made no provision for persons born without the use of
their reason, such as we call fools, or, more properly, naturals.

We use such in England with the last contempt, which I think is a
strange error, since though they are useless to the commonwealth,