Shelley draws a hard line between wealth that’s earned fairly and anything gained through force, fraud, or fawning. The opening insists that what we come by honestly is rightfully ours, even to the point of letting our children inherit a life of idleness — a private unfairness, he admits, that might somehow serve a larger good. But the tone sharpens radically in the second half. When property is taken by “base and armed wrong” or scheming lies, it no longer belongs to the holder; it can be snatched back like a stolen garment ripped off a convicted thief. The speaker’s voice is stern and unyielding, full of moral contempt. There’s no sympathy for corruption here — only a cold satisfaction in seeing the wrongdoer exposed. The image of being stripped and left in “the nakedness of infamy” gives the whole fragment a stark, almost theatrical mood of righteous humiliation, where justice feels grim, swift, and absolute.
Fragment: 'What Men Gain Fairly' — Summary
What men gain fairly--that they should possess, And children may inherit idleness, From him who earns it--This is understood; Private injustice may be general good. But he who gains by base and armed wrong, Or guilty fraud, or base compliances, May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress Is stripped from a convicted thief; and he Left in the nakedness of infamy.