They abound with slaves, but are indigent of money. The ancient
Roman emperors, who had the riches of the whole world for their
revenue, had wherewithal to live, one would have thought, pretty
well at ease, and to have been exempt from the pressures of extreme
poverty. But yet with most of them it was much otherwise, and they
fell perpetually into such miserable penury, that they were forced
to devour or squeeze most of their friends and servants, to cheat
with infamous projects, to ransack and pillage all their provinces.
This fashion of imperial grandeur is imitated by all inferior and
subordinate sorts of it, as if it were a point of honour. They must
be cheated of a third part of their estates, two other thirds they
must expend in vanity, so that they remain debtors for all the
necessary provisions of life, and have no way to satisfy those debts
but out of the succours and supplies of rapine; "as riches
increase," says Solomon, "so do the mouths that devour it." The
master mouth has no more than before; the owner, methinks, is like
Genus in the fable, who is perpetually winding a rope of hay and an
ass at the end perpetually eating it.
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