the means of production by the luxury of the higher classes is the least advantageous; the superfluities destined for the rich absorb the forces which, if better employed, would increase the general well-being; and it is besides a certain truth, that the industry which produces them is of all others the worst remunerated, and the least favourable to the happiness of the classes that live by it. The reason of this is plain. Whilst there exists a constant and certain demand for articles necessary for human life, those of luxury are exposed to all the vicissitudes of fashion and circumstances; sometimes a change in the fashion depreciates their value, at other times a war, or some event which makes money scarce, prevents their sale; the consequence to the producers is a fall in prices, or a cessation of demand. "Thus has it been noticed," remarks M. Say, "that the directors of establishments which produce superfluities make the smallest profits, and that their workmen receive the lowest wages. In Normandy and Flanders the finest laces are prepared by persons exceedingly miserable; and the workmen of Lyons, who fabricate the brocades, are clad in rags."

"What would happen," says Storch, "if the rich made a better use of their incomes, and employed them reproductively? There would be produced fewer articles of luxury, and more of those of the first necessity. The number of jewellers, gilders, dressmakers, embroiderers, and lacemakers, would diminish; a crowd of lacqueys, hairdressers, parasites, singers and players, would betake themselves to useful trades; a number of horses kept for pleasure would be employed in agriculture or the transport of goods; large tracts of country, reserved for parks and pleasure-grounds, would be

turned into arable land; in a word, capital and industry would be augmented, and ease would become general."

Adam Smith also has pointed out with his usual sagacity the pernicious effects of an unproductive consumption. "In mercantile and manufacturing towns," says he, "where the inferior ranks of the people are chiefly maintained by the employment of capital, they are in general industrious, sober, and thriving, as in many English and in most Dutch towns. In those towns which are principally supported by the constant or occasional residence of a court, and in which the inferior ranks of the people are chiefly maintained by the spending of revenue, they are in general idle, dissolute, and poor." After citing as examples the inhabitants of Rome, Versailles, Compeigne, and Fontainebleau, Madrid, and Vienna, and those towns in France which were the seats of the old Parliaments, with the exception of Rouen and Bordeaux, which owe to commerce the advantages of their situation, the same author remarks, that there is reason to believe that the sloth of the classes supported by the unproductive rich corrupts the laborious part of the population. "There was little trade or industry in Edinburgh before the Union.When the Scotch Parliament was no longer to be assembled in it, when it ceased to be the necessary residence of the principal nobility and gentry of Scotland, it became a city of some trade and industry. It still continues, however, to be the residence of the principal courts of Justice in Scotland, of the boards of Customs, Excise, &c. A considerable revenue, therefore, still continues to be spent in it. In trade and industry it is much inferior to Glasgow, of which the

inhabitants are chiefly maintained by the employment of capital. The inhabitants of a large village, it has been sometimes observed, after having made considerable progress in manufactures, have become idle and poor in consequence of a great lord having taking up his residence in their neighbourhood."

Müller, in his History of Switzerland, makes the same observation in regard to the town of Constance. The holding of the council having transformed Constance into a town of luxury, the manufacturers emigrated to St. Gall; and from that period the latter dates its prosperity.

So great a boast has been made of the advantages attached to the residence of great proprietors on their estates, that the facts above announced will scarcely obtain credence; and still nothing can be more true. The establishment of a vast focus of consumption, if it in some respects favours the local production, in others is often much more hurtful to it. On the one hand, the example of the rich, and especially that of their servants, introduces, for the most part, a taste for luxury and habits of idleness. On the other, the works which they cause to be executed, in withdrawing the working people from their habitual occupations, and raising the price of manual labour, discourage the directors of industrial enterprises, and induce them to transport their industry elsewhere. What happens then? This: that in exchange for a stable and permanent existence, the people have only precarious and uncertain resources. Men who, lured by the offer of higher wages, have deserted their ordinary employments to raise terraces or dig basons in the park of a great proprietor, find themselves, when some months are over, without bread or

D

employment forced into a state of idleness, they acquire its deplorable habits; and to a moral and orderly course of life succeed dissoluteness and misery.

There is, as we see, in the consequences of the improvidence of the poor, and the uncertainty of wages paid by the rich, something analogous to what we observed in regard to those communities whose industry supplies the caprices and the luxury of the wealthy class. Perhaps longer details would be necessary to bring out all the inconveniences resulting from an undue inequality of fortunes; but I believe that I have said enough to leave scarce a doubt on the subject.

CHAPTER VII.

ON ARISTOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS IN THEIR CONNEXION

WITH MANNERS.

HAVING seen how, in adjudging to a small number the property, the honours, the distinctions, in a word, all the advantages of society, aristocratical privileges tend to divide the population into two classes, the one poor, and the other rich,-let us now weigh the moral consequences of such an order of things.

We shall begin by noticing the influence which is exercised over the ideas, sentiments, and conduct of the inferior classes by the obstacles opposed to their industry and comfort; and then proceed to examine the manners natural to the classes whose opulence is the fruit of privilege.

As agent and object of his own labours, man displays, according to time and circumstance, qualities diversely

promotive of his happiness. Sometimes, a being intelligent and laborious, he lives in abundance and comfort; at other times, indolent and rude, he vegetates in ignorance and misery: and it is not merely amongst nations whose population, far scattered, are living under unfavourable circumstances of soil and climate, that so revolting a contrast afflicts the sight. Only a few years back, to pass from Saxony into Bohemia, from Holland into Westphalia, from Switzerland into Savoy or Franche Comté, was, as the traveller Riesbeck observes, to quit a land of fertility and cultivation, for another which sloth had left nearly in a state of nature. A number of nations may even at the present day give occasion to the same reflections: subjected to institutions more or less favourable to the development of their physical and moral faculties, they advance with unequal speed in the career of arts and industry :-in every case there is a dominant cause at work ;- the extent of the recompence assured to individual exertions accelerates or retards their progress; and whilst wealth is the appanage of all the countries in which man is able to raise himself by his labour to a more honourable position, indigence or sloth prevails in those whose spoliatory institutions take from him the hope of eventually bettering his condition.

In Ireland, in the time of Arthur Young, it was remarked that three labourers scarcely executed in a day the task easily performed by one Englishman,and, what is singular, these same Irish have an excellent character as workmen in Britain. It may be said that the passage of St. George's Channel gives them at once new powers; and such is actually the effect pro-duced on them by the difference of wages. Idle and