Blount, Thomas Pope, Sir (1649-1697)

Essays on Several Subjects Written by Sir Tho. Pope Blount

London

Printed for Richard Bently

1691

"Trade is the very Life and Soul of the Universe, which, like the Vital Blood in the Body, Circulates to the Health, and well-being of the whole, and when by the failure of Industry, there is a stop put to Commerce, it often proves as fatal to the Body Politick, as the stagnating of the Blood does to the Natural Body."

[...] Trade is the very Life and Soul of the Universe, which, like the Vital Blood in the Body, Circulates to the Health, and well-being of the whole, and when by the failure of Industry, there is a stop put to Commerce, it often proves as fatal to the Body Politick, as the stagnating of the Blood does to the Natural Body. What were the World but a rude and dull Indigested Lump, a noisome and pestilential Mass, did not Commerce, like the Sun, by its Universal Rays, exhale all its malignant and noxious Vapours, and by a continual Motion and Transaction, render it wholesome and profitable? What would become of the Busie Soul of Man, had she not found out a variety of Imployment for its Exercise? And therefore Nature wisely did foresee the many and great Inconveniences of Idleness, how that it would Convert the World into another Chaos, making the Earth but as one dull and useless Mass, when she hid her Rarities and Treasures in the secret Bowels thereof, and buried them in the Watry Deep, and lodg'd them at so vast and remote a distance, that so their Worth and Value might be a Spur to Labour and Industry to fetch them hence. [...]
(pp. 178-9)

Uncategorized::Trade Body::Circulation

Reading Howard D. Weinbrot's, Britannia's Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), 264.

Text from Sir Tho. Pope Blount's Essays on Several Subjects, 3rd impression (London: Printed for Richard Bently, 1697). <Link to EEBO>

01/12/2012