II. WOFUL WEALTH.

BARBAROUS is the custom of some English people on the seaside to prey on the goods of poor shipwrecked merchants. But more devilish in their design, who make false fires to undirect seamen in a tempest, that thereby from the right road they may be misled into danger and destruction.

England hath been tossed with a hurricane of a civil war. Some men are said to have gotten great wealth thereby. But it is an ill leap when men grow rich per saltum, taking their rise from the miseries of a land, to which their own sins have contributed their share. Those are far worse (and may not such be found?) who, by cunning insinuations, and false glossings, have, in these dangerous days, trained and betrayed simple men into mischief.

Can their pelf prosper, not got by valour or industry, but deceit? surely it cannot be wholesome, when every morsel of their meat is mummy (good physic but bad food), made of the corses of men’s estates. Nor will it prove happy, it being to be feared, that such who have been enriched with other men’s ruins will be ruined by their own riches. The child of ten years is old enough to remember the beginning of such men’s wealth, and the man 125of threescore and ten is young enough to see the ending thereof.