do with it. It is therefore not lost. A vain silly fel-
low 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 employ assisted in main-
taining and raising their families; the farmer has
been paid for his labour, and encouraged, and the es-
tate is now in better hands. In some cases, indeed,
certain modes of luxury may be a public evil, in the
same manner as it is a private one. If there be a na-
tion, for instance, that exports its beef and linen, to
pay for the importation 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 family starve, and sells his clothes to buy
drink? Our American commerce is, I confess, a lit-
tle 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 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 inhabitants of the sea-ports, is judging from an improper sample. The people of the trading towns may be rich and luxurious, while the country possesses all the virtues that tend to promote happiness and public prosperity. Those towns are not much regarded by the coun

try; they are hardly considered as an essential part of the states; and the experience of the last war has shown, that their being in the possession of the enemy did not necessarily draw on the subjection of the country, which bravely continued to maintain its freedom and independence notwithstanding.

It has been computed by some political arithmetician, that if every man and woman 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 twentyfour hours might be leisure and pleasure.

What occasions then so much want and misery? It is the employment of men and women in works that produce neither the necessaries nor conveniences of life, who, with those who do nothing, consume necessaries raised by the laborious. To explain this:

The first elements of wealth are obtained by labour from the earth and waters. I 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 1 shall be no richer than I was at the beginning. But if, while I feed them, I employ them, some in spinning, others in making bricks, &c. for building, the value of my corn will be arrested and remain with me, and at the end of the year we may all be better clothed and better lodged. 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 manufacture remains to augment the wealth and convenience 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 employed in doing nothing, or in something that amounts to nothing, when the necessaries and conveniences 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 people 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 hardly brighten a spot big enough to be visible 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 ages since were only to be found on the coast of the Mediterranean; and this notwithstanding the mad wars continually raging, by which are often destroyed in one year the works of many year's 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 expense. The feet demand shoes; the legs stockings; the rest of the body clothing; and the belly a good deal of victuals. Our eyes, though 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 myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture.

ON SMUGGLING, AND ITS VARIOUS SPECIES.

SIR,

To the Editor of the London Chronicle.

Nov. 24, 1767.

THERE are many people that would be thought, and even think themselves, honest men, who fail nevertheless in particular points of honesty; deviating

from that character sometimes by the prevalence of mode or custom, and sometimes through mere inattention; so that their honesty is partial only, and not general or universal. Thus one, who would scorn to overreach you in a bargain, shall make no scruple of tricking you a little now and then at cards; another, that plays with the utmost fairness, shall, with great freedom, cheat you in the sale of a horse. But there is no kind of dishonesty, into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall, than that of defrauding government of its revenues by smuggling, when they have an opportunity, or encouraging smugglers by buying their goods.

I fell into these reflections the other day, on hearing two gentlemen of reputation discoursing about a small estate, which one of them was inclined to sell, and the other to buy; when the seller, in recommending the place, remarked, that its situation was very advantageous on this account; that, being on the seacoast in a smuggling country, one had frequent opportunities of buying many of the expensive articles used in a family (such as tea, coffee, chocolate, brandy, wines, cambrics, Brussels laces, French silks, and al! kinds of India goods,) 20, 30, and in some articles 50 per cent. cheaper than they could be had in the more interior parts, of traders that paid duty. The other honest gentleman allowed this to be an advantage, but insisted that the seller, in the advanced price he demanded on that account, rated the advantage much above its value : and neither of them seemed to think dealing with