He that catches at more than belongs to him justly deserves to lose what
he has. Yet nothing is more common, and, at the same time, more
pernicious, than this selfish principle. It prevails from the king to
the peasant; and all orders and degrees of men are, more or less,
infected with it. Great monarchs have been drawn in, by this greedy
humour, to grasp at the dominions of their neighbours; not that they
wanted any thing more to feed their luxury, but to gratify their
insatiable appetite for vain-glory. If the kings of Persia could have
been contented with their own vast territories, they had not lost all
Asia for the sake of a little petty state of Greece. And France, with
all its glory, has, ere now, been reduced to the last extremity by the
same unjust encroachments.
He that thinks he sees another's estate in a pack of cards, or a box and
dice, and ventures his own in the pursuit of it, should not repine if he
finds himself a beggar in the end.