If honesty be true policy with regard to the transient interest of
individuals, it is much more certainly so with regard to the permanent
interests of communities. I know, that it is but too natural for us to
see our own CERTAIN ruin in the POSSIBLE prosperity of other people. It
is hard to persuade us, that everything which is GOT by another is not
TAKEN from ourselves. But it is fit that we should get the better of
these suggestions, which come from what is not the best and soundest
part of our nature, and that we should form to ourselves a way of
thinking, more rational, more just, and more religious. Trade is not a
limited thing; as if the objects of mutual demand and consumption could
not stretch beyond the bounds of our jealousies. God has given the earth
to the children of men, and he has undoubtedly, in giving it to them,
given them what is abundantly sufficient for all their exigencies; not
a scanty, but a most liberal, provision for them all. The author of our
nature has written it strongly in that nature, and has promulgated
the same law in his written word, that man shall eat his bread by his
labour; and I am persuaded, that no man, and no combination of men, for
their own ideas of their particular profit, can, without great impiety,
undertake to say, that he SHALL NOT do so; that they have no sort of
right, either to prevent the labour, or to withhold the bread.