accumulation of riches, but to have left the
country, at the end of the period, poorer than
at the beginning, Thus, in the happiest and
most fortunate period of them all, that which
has passed since the Restoration, how many
disorders and misfortunes have occurred,
which, could they have been foreseen, not only
the impoverishment, but the total ruin of the
country would have been expected from them?
The fire and the plague of London, the two
Dutch wars, the disorders of the revolution,
the war in Ireland, the four expensive French
wars of 1688, 1701, 1742, and 1756, together
with the two rebellions of 1715 and 1745. In
the course of the four French wars, the nation
has contracted more than L.145,000,000 of
debt, over and above all the other extraordinary
annual expense which they occasioned;
so that the whole cannot be computed at less
than L.200,000,000. So great a share of the
annual produce of the land and labour of the
country, has, since the Revolution, been employed
upon different occasions, in maintaining
an extraordinary number of unproductive
hands. But had not those wars given this
particular direction to so large a capital, the
greater part of it would naturally have been
employed in maintaining productive hands,
whose labour would have replaced, with a profit,
the whole value of their consumption. The
value of the annual produce of the land and
labour of the country would have been considerably
increased by it every year, and every
year's increase would have augmented still
more that of the following year. More houses
would have been built, more lands would have
been improved, and those which had been improved
before would have been better cultivated;
more manufactures would have been
established, and those which had been established
before would have been more extended;
and to what height the real wealth and revenue
of the country might by this time have
been raised, it is not perhaps very easy even
to imagine.
But though the profusion of government
must undoubtedly have retarded the natural
progress of England towards wealth and improvement,
it has not been able to stop it.
The annual produce of its land and labour is
undoubtedly much greater at present than it
was either at the Restoration or at the Revolution.
The capital, therefore, annually employed
in cultivating this land, and in maintaining
this labour, must likewise be much
greater. In the midst of all the exactions of
government, this capital has been silently and
gradually accumulated by the private frugality
and good conduct of individuals, by their
universal, continual, and uninterrupted effort
to better their own condition. It is this effort,
protected by law, and allowed by liberty to
exert itself in the manner that is most advantageous,
which has maintained the progress
of England towards opulence and improvement
in almost all former times, and which,
it is to be hoped, will do so in all future
times. England, however, as it has never
been blessed with a very parsimonious government,
so parsimony has at no time been
the characteristic virtue of its inhabitants. It
is the highest impertinence and presumption,
therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to
watch over the economy of private people,
and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary
laws, or by prohibiting the importation
of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always,
and without any exception, the greatest
spendthrifts in the society. Let them look
well after their own expense, and they may
safely trust private people with theirs. If
their own extravagance does not ruin the state,
that of the subject never will.
As frugality increases, and prodigality diminishes,
the public capital, so the conduct of
those whose expense just equals their revenue,
without either accumulating or encroaching,
neither increases nor diminishes it. Some
modes of expense, however, seem to contribute
more to the growth of public opulence
than others.
The revenue of an individual may be spent,
either in things which are consumed immediately,
and in which one day's expense can neither
alleviate nor support that of another; or it
may be spent in things more durable, which
can therefore be accumulated, and in which
every every day's expense may, as he chooses, either
alleviate, or support and heighten, the effect
of that of the following day. A man of fortune,
for example, may either spend his revenue
in a profuse and sumptuous table, and in
maintaining a great number of menial servants,
and a multitude of dogs and horses;
or, contenting himself with a frugal table,
and few attendants, he may lay out the greater
part of it in adorning his house or his country
villa, in useful or ornamental buildings,
in useful or ornamental furniture, in collecting
books, statues, pictures; or in things more
frivolous, jewels, baubles, ingenious trinkets
of different kinds; or, what is must trifling
of all, in amassing a great wardrobe of fine
clothes, like the favourite and minister of a
great prince who died a few years ago. Were
two men of equal fortune to spend their revenue,
the one chiefly in the one way, the other
in the other, the magnificence of the person
whose expense had been chiefly in durable
commodities, would be continually increasing,
every day's expense contributing something
to support and heighten the effect of that of
the following day; that of the other, on the
contrary, would be no greater at the end of
the period than at the beginning. The former
too would, at the end of the period, be
the richer man of the two. He would have
a stock of goods of some kind or other, which,
though it might not be worth all that it cost,
would always be worth something. No trace