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There is one of them at a Coffee-house which I my self frequent, who observing me to be a Man pretty well made for Secrets, gets by me, and with a Whisper tells me things which all the Town knows. It is no very hard matter to guess at the Source of this Impertinence, which is nothing else but a Method or Mechanick Art of being wise.
The merchant sends out ships, and hath prosperous returns; the mechanick hath quick trading: here is almost a new world; new laws, new Lords. Now my country of England shall shed no more tears, but rejoice with, and in the many blessings God gives or affords her annually. And in the same book, page 118, over-against the year 1660, you shall find, A bonny Scot acts his part.
It is, therefore, my lords, of the utmost importance, that all practices should be suppressed by which the lower orders of the people are enfeebled and enervated; for if they should be no longer able to bear fatigues or hardships, if any epidemical weakness of body should be diffused among them, our power must be at an end, our mines would be an useless treasure, and would no longer afford us either the weapons of war, or the ornaments of domestick elegance; we should no longer give law to mankind by our naval power, nor send out armies to fight for the liberty of distant nations; we should no longer supply the markets of the continent with our commodities, or share in all the advantages which nature has bestowed upon distant countries, for all these, my lords, are the effects of indigent industry, and mechanick labour.
Beyond all, I was most pleas'd with the Mathematicks, for the certainty and evidence of the reasons thereof; but I did not yet observe their true use, and thinking that it served only for Mechanick Arts; I wondred, that since the grounds thereof were so firm and solid, that nothing more sublime had been built thereon.
Did not sometimes indignation, and sometimes pity, check the sallies of mirth, it would not be a disagreeable entertainment, my lords, to observe, in the park, the various appearances of these raw commanders, when they are exposing their new scarlet to view, and strutting with the first raptures of sudden elevation; to see the mechanick new-modelling his mien, and the stripling tottering beneath the weight of his cockade; or to hear the conversation of these new adventurers, and the instructive dialogues of schoolboys and shopkeepers.
Many that presume to laugh at projectors, would consider a flight through the air in a winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty engine by the steam of water as equally the dreams of mechanick lunacy; and would hear, with equal negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by a canal, and the scheme of Albuquerque, the viceroy of the Indies, who in the rage of hostility had contrived to make Egypt a barren desert, by turning the Nile into the Red Sea.
One of the greatest Merchants in the Moon rais'd himself by this Method to such a heighth of Wealth, that he left all his Children married to Grandees, Dukes, and Great Folks; and from a Mechanick Original, they are now rankt among the Lunarian Nobility, while multitudes of ruin'd Families helpt to build his Fortune, by sinking under the Knavery of his Contrivance.
Now it happen'd in a certain Solunarian Island, that for want of a better, one of their High Priests was put into the Civil Administration, and made a Lazognian. In the Neighbourhood of this Man's Jurisdiction, one of their own Solunarian Priests had turn'd Crolian, and whether he had a better Tallent at performance, or rather was more diligent in his Office is not material, but he set up a kind of a Crolian Temple in an old Barn, or some such Mechanick Building, and all the People flock'd after him.
The year of election is a year of jollity; and, what is still more delightful, a year of equality: the glutton now eats the delicacies for which he longed when he could not purchase them, and the drunkard has the pleasure of wine, without the cost: the drone lives awhile without work, and the shopkeeper, in the flow of money, raises his price: the mechanick, that trembled at the presence of sir Joseph, now bids him come again for an answer: and the poacher, whose gun has been seized, now finds an opportunity to reclaim it.
Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown In Rome, as well as I: mechanick slaves With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forced to drink their vapour. Iras. The gods forbid! Cleopatra.
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