live upon potatoes, and wear no fhirts; wherein does it differ from the fot who lets his family ftarve, and fells his clothes to buy drink? Our American commerce is, I confefs, a little in this way. We fell our victuals to the iflands for rum and fugar; the fubftantial neceffaries of life for fuperfluities. But we have. plenty, and live well nevertheless; though, by being foberer, we might be richer.

The vast quantity of foreft 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 feen among the inhabitants of the fea-ports, is judging from an improper fample. The people of the trading towns may be rich and luxurious, while the country poffeffes all: the virtues that tend to promote happinefs and public profperity. Those

towns

towns are not much regarded by the country; they are hardly considered as an effential part of the ftates; and the experience of the last war has shewn, that their being in the poffeffion of the enemy did not neceffarily draw on the subjection of the country; which bravely continued to maintain its freedom and independence notwithstanding.

It has been computed by fome political arithmetician, that if every man and woman would work for four hours each day on fomething ufeful, that labour would produce fufficient to procure all the neceffaries and comforts of life; want and mifery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the twentyfour hours might be leisure and pleafure.

What occafions then fo much want and mifery? It is the employment of men and women in works that produce neither the neceffaries nor conveniences

of

of life, who, with thofe who do nothing, confume neceffaries raised by the laborious. To explain this :

The firft elements of wealth are ob

tained by labour, from the earth and waters. I have land, and raife corn. With this, if I feed a family that does nothing, my corn will be confumed, and at the end of the year I fhall be no richer than I was at the beginning. But if, while I feed them, I employ them, some in fpinning, 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 fhall therefore be the poorer for this fiddling man, unless the rest of

my

my family work more, or eat lefs, to make up the deficiency he occafions.

Look round the world, and fee the millions employed in doing nothing, or in fomething that amounts to nothing, when the neceffaries and conveniences of life are in queftion. What is the bulk of commerce, for which we fight and deftroy each other, but the toil of millions for fuperfluities, to the great hazard and lofs of many lives, by the conftant dangers of the fea? How much labour is fpent in building and fitting great hips, to go to China and Arabia for tea and coffee, to the West Indies for fugar, to America for tobacco? Thefe things cannot be called the neceffaries of life, for our ancestors lived very comfortably without them.

A queftion may be asked: Could all thefe people now employed in raifing, making, or carrying fuperfluities, be fubfifted by railing neceffaries? I think

they

they might. The world is large, and a great part of it still uncultivated. Many hundred millions of acres in Afia, Africa, and America, are still in a forest; and a great deal even in Europe. On a hundred acres of this foreft a man might become a fubftantial 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 Herfchel's telescope; fo vast are the regions fill in wood.

It is however fome comfort to reflect, that, upon the whole, the quantity of industry and prudence among mankind exceeds the quantity of idlenefs and folly. Hence the increase of good buildings, farms cultivated, and populous cities filled with wealth, all over Europe, which a few ages fince were only to be found on the coafts of the Mediterranean; and this notwithstanding the