On LUXURY, IDLENESS, and INDUSTRY.

From a Letter to Benjamin Vaughan, Esq. *

IT is wonderful how preposterously the affairs of this world are managed. Naturally one would imagine that the interest of a few individuals should give way to general interest; but individuals manage their affairs with so much more application, industry and address, than the public do theirs, that general interest most commonly gives way to particular.—We assemble parliaments and councils, to have the benefit of their collected wisdom; but we necessarily have, at the same time, the inconvenience of their collected passions, prejudices, and private interests. By the help of these, artful men overpower their wisdom, and dupe its possessors; and if we may judge by the acts, arrets, and edicts, all the world over, for regulation commerce, an assembly of great men is the greatest fool upon earth.

I have not yet, indeed, thought of a remedy for luxury. I am not sure that in a great state it is capable of a remedy; nor that the evil is in itself always so great as it is represented. Suppose we include in the definition of luxury all unnecessary expence, and then let us consider whether laws to Page 71 prevent such expence are possible to be executed in a great country, and whether, if they could be exe|cuted, our people generally would be happier, or even richer. Is not the hope of being one day able to purchase and enjoy luxuries, a great spur to labour and industry? May not luxury therefore produce more than it consumes, if, without such a spur, people would be, as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent? To this purpose I remember a circumstance. The skipper of a shallop, employed between Cape-May and Philadelphia, had done us some small service, for which he refused to be paid. My wife under|standing that he had a daughter, sent her a present of a new-fashioned cap. Three years after, this skipper being at my house with an old farmer of Cape-May, his passenger, he mentioned the cap, and how much his daughter had been pleased with it. "But (said he) it proved a dear cap to our congregation."—"How so?"—"When my daugh|ter appeared with it at meeting, it was so much admired, that all the girls resolved to get such caps from Philadelphia; and my wife and I computed that the whole could not have cost less than a hun|dred pounds"—"True, (said the farmer) but you do not tell all the story. I think the cap was ne|vertheless an advantage to us; for it was the first thing that put our girl, upon knitting worsted mit|tens for sale at Philadelphia, that they might have wherewithal to buy caps and ribbons there; and you know that that industry has continued, and is likely to continue and increase to a much greater value, and answer much better purposes."—Upon the whole, I was more reconciled to this little piece of luxury, since not only the girls were made hap|pier Page 72 by having fine caps, but the Philadelphians by the supply of warm mittens.

In our commercial towns upon the sea-coast, fortunes will occasionally be made. Some of those who grow rich will be prudent, live within bounds, and preserve what they have gained for their pos|terity: others, fond of shewing their wealth, will be extravagant and ruin themselves. Laws can|not prevent this: and perhaps it is not always an evil to the public. A shilling spent idly by a fool, may be picked up by a wiser person, who knows better what to do with it. It is therefore not lost. A vain, silly fellow builds a fine house, furnishes it richly, lives in it expensively, and in a few years ruins himself: but the masons, carpenters, smiths, and other honest tradesmen, have been by his em|ploy assisted in maintaining and raising their fami|lies; the farmer has been paid for his labour, and encouraged, and the estate is now in better hands.—In some cases, indeed, certain modes of luxury may be a public evil, in the manner as it is a pri|vate one. If there be a nation, for instance, that exports its beef and linen, to pay for the importa|tion of claret and porter, while a great part of its people live upon potatoes, and wear no shirts; wherein does it differ from the sot who lets his fa|mily starve, and sells his clothes to buy drink? Our American commerce is, I confess, a little in this way. We sell our victuals to the islands for rum and sugar; the substantial necessaries of life for superfluities. But we have plenty, and live well nevertheless, though, by being soberer, we might be richer,

The vast quantity of forest land we have yet to clear, and put in order for cultivation, will for a Page 73 long time keep the body of our nation laborious and frugal. Forming an opinion of our people and their manners, by what is seen among the in|habitants of the sea-ports, is judging from an im|proper sample. The people of the trading towns may be rich and luxurious, while the country pos|sesses all the virtues that tend to promote happiness and public prosperity. Those towns are not much regarded by the country; they are hardly consi|dered as an essential part of the states; and the experience of last war has shewn, that their being in the possession of the enemy did not neces|sarily draw on the subjection of the country; which bravely continued to maintain its freedom and in|dependence notwithstanding.

It has been computed by some political arithme|tician, that if every man and women would work for four hours each day on something useful, that labour would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life; want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the twenty-four hours might be leisure and plea|sure.

What occasions then so much want and misery? It is the employment of men and women in works that produce neither the necessaries or conveniences of life, who, with those that do nothing, consume necessaries raised by the laborious. To explain this:

The first elements of wealth are obtained by la|bour, from the earth and waters. 〈◊〉 have land, and raise corn. With this, if I feed a family that does nothing, my corn will be consumed, and at the end of the year I shall be no richer than I was at the beginning. But if while I feed them, I employ Page 74 them, some in spinning, others in making bricks, &c. for building, the value of my corn will be ar|rested and remain with me, and at the end of the year we may be all better clothed and better lodg|ed. And if, instead of employing a man I feed in making bricks, I employ him in fiddling for me, the corn he eats is gone, and no part of his manu|facture remains to augment the wealth and conve|nience of the family; I shall therefore be the poorer for this fiddling man, unless the rest of my family work more, or eat less, to make up the deficiency he occasions.

Look round the world, and see the millions em|ployed in doing nothing, or in something that amounts to nothing, when the necessaries and con|veniences of life are in question. What Is the bulk of commerce, for which we fight and destroy each other, but the toil of millions for superfluities, to the great hazard and loss of many lives, by the constant dangers of the sea? How much labour is spent in building and fitting great ships, to go to China and Arabia for tea and coffee, to the West-Indies for sugar, to America for tobacco? These things cannot be called the necessaries of life, for our ancestors lived very comfortably without them.

A question may be asked: Could all these peo|ple now employed in raising, making, or carrying superfluities, be subsisted by raising necessaries? I think they might. The world is large, and a great part of it still uncultivated. Many hundred millions of acres in Asia, Africa, and America, are still in a forest; and a great deal even in Europe. On a hundred acres of this forest, a man might become a substantial farmer; and a hundred thousand men employed in clearing each his hundred acres, would Page 75 hardly brigthen a spot big enough to be vesible from the moon, unless with Herschel's telescope; so vast are the regions still in wood.

It is however some comfort to reflect, that, upon the whole, the quantity of industry and prudence among mankind exceeds the quantity of idleness and folly. Hence the increase of good buildings, farms cultivated, and populous cities filled with wealth, all over Europe, which a few years since were only to be found on the coasts of the Medi|terranean; and this notwithstanding the mad wars continually raging, by which are often destroyed in one year the works of many years peace. So that we may hope, the luxury of a few merchants on the coast will not be the ruin of America.

One reflection more, and I will end this long rambling letter. Almost all the parts of our bodies require some expence. The feet demand shoes; the legs stockings; the rest of the body clothing; and the belly a good deal of victuals. Our eyes, tho' exceedingly useful, ask, when reasonable, only the cheap assistance of spectacles, which could not much impair our finances. But the eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but my|self were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture.