Those articles which in one generation indicate wealth, become common property in the next. This results from the géneral progress of society and the constant advance of economic powers. As production rises, it covers the monuments of earlier taste or grandeur.

The direction, too, of luxurious consumption varies with the culture and the aspiration of those able to indulge in it. In one circle, it will run to horses and hounds; in another, to paintings and statuary: some will turn for enjoyment to architecture; others, to dress and equipage; more, still, to feasting and dissipation.

The ground of luxurious consumption is, perhaps, best determined by the boundaries of its neighbors. It embraces nothing that is spent in the purpose of a reproduction, more or less immediate and direct. The necessary consumption of a people depends chiefly on absolute wants, is not greatly a matter of choice, fancy, or taste; but its luxuries, those things which it may or may not have, depend entirely, for their kind and degree, upon moral and intellectual characteristics. Consequently, they furnish an index of the national civilization.

1st, Do luxuries directly encourage industry?

We shall reach the truth of this by illustrations. When William IV. came to the throne of England, he erected a tower at one of the entrances of the palace where he made his residence. It cost $500,000. There was no pretence of utility whatever in the building. It was pure luxury. It was an elegant structure. It gratified the monarch's taste. It was highly ornamental to the castle and the grounds. What was the economical effect? The erection gave employment to mechanics and laborers; it made a call for materials and architectural skill; it made trade brisk in the neighborhood. Was it therefore beneficial? Suppose it had accorded more with his majesty's views to take the same money, and with it erect two hundred cottages on the crown lands, at an expense of $2,500 each. This would

have called for as much labor and materials as the tower; would have given as great an impetus to trade. At the same time, it would have brought into existence comfortable residences for the families of two hundred laborers. If the cottages were rented at a moderate rate, the income would be equal to a fair interest, and the dwellings would stand for generations, a valuable property, conferring happiness and comfort on a thousand people.

But there is more to come. We said, "take the same money." What money? Whose money? Now, in arguments for govermental luxury, it is always assumed that the money is in the treasury. But how came the money into the public coffers? Who furnishes the money? The sober, steady industries of the country. The money to make King William's tower came from Leeds and Sheffield and Manchester. It encouraged one class of artisans. True. Whom did it discourage? A class that is always out of sight in such reckonings, the class that pays the taxes. Then, so far, it only amounts to changing the capital of the country from one hand to another; employing one class by turning off another; a change that is never made without distress and loss.

There is still more to be said. If the wealth had remained in the hands of the manufacturer, say, it would have been capital, and supported workmen this year. So has the tower. But, in the latter use, next year it will be no longer reproductive; while, in cotton-spinning or land-draining, it would grow with every day, and furnish unfailing employment for labor. A thousand dollars spent in luxury will pay a thousand dollars of wages (less certain little items). A thousand dollars employed as capital will, in ten years, pay twenty thousand dollars of wages. Such is the difference in results.

A similar instance is that of a man expending ten thousand dollars on an enlargement of his house for purposes of grandeur or enjoyment, or laying it out in draining and

improving fifty acres of land. In either case, he pays a certain amount of wages; but, in the latter, he has added a permanent value to the country; increasing his own annual income, and affording the means of employing a certain amount of labor to the end of time.

Wealth, employed as capital, is an annuity made out in the name of the laborer, and good for life.

There is no possible case in which the employment of wealth, for purposes of luxury, as opposed to reproduction, can be said directly to advantage industry. It is only the fierce blaze of the burning house, at which a few may be for a moment warmed, but which goes out, leaving desolation where was habitation and home.

2d, Do luxuries indirectly encourage industry? Here we must turn sharply on our previous decision, and see a further meaning in luxurious consumption than first appeared. Unquestionably, a wholesome luxury is one of the most important principles of production. What is it that kindles the desire of acquisition; that keeps the hand strong to labor? Is it not the hope to spend? For what else, the wretched miser excepted, do men toil early and late? It is the promise of future enjoyments that calls out half the work of the world. It is this that makes the difference between nations. No man passes by the abode of leisure and refinement without receiving an incitement to effort.

There is one practical limitation of this principle, which is of great social and economical importance.. It arises from the relative position of those who do, and those who as yet cannot, indulge in luxurious consumption. If a few are very rich, and the many very poor, the expenditures of the former have very little effect on the condition of the latter. Since these cannot aspire to the enjoyment of their superiors, their ambition, instead of being excited, is depressed. If, on the contrary, the interval between the classes is narrow, and the differences moderate, the luxuries of the rich exert strong and increasing desires in those who are less

wealthy. These desires create wealth. It is not the gifts. of nature, nor the constraints of law, that heap up the stores of value. It is the force with which man moves to production, wholly determined, as that is, by his economic desires. The luxury of European courts has no elevating influence upon the masses: quite otherwise. Robbed to furnish the means of others, they are hopeless of ever attaining to such fortune themselves. But where the grades of society are fixed only by differences of natural endowment, and so are moderate and regular, rising by easy steps, the entire population becomes inspired with the purpose of reaching a higher position. In such a state, the imagination can hardly run ahead of wealth.

We have, then, attained the principle, that luxurious consumption, while it directly gives no help to industry, but rather spends in one hour's enjoyment the provision of months or years, may yet, by its influence on man's desires, create a productive force which shall make its extravagance seem economy, its waste appear frugality itself.

But this is only true of harmonious, temperate, and wellproportioned luxury. There are indulgences, great courses of indulgence, which, while they excite momentarily to production for the means of gratification, do yet, by their certain and inevitable effect on the physical and mental powers of the individual, by their demoralizing and perverting influence on the community, prostrate industry, and overturn the foundations of the state. Many as are the unfortunate possibilities which attend upon production and distribution, they are all inferior in interest to the momentous decisions of consumption; and here in luxury, as we find the spring of all beneficent activity, we also find the root of all economic evils. So vast and so important are the issues here involved, that many of them are taken away from the political economist by the statesman or the moralist. We do not propose to follow these principles into all their results; content with only indicating their starting-point and direction.

Such is luxurious consumption, in its definition and its general principles. We shall further discuss the degree to which it is, or may be, carried in any community.

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE DEGREE OF LUXURIOUS CONSUMPTION.

WE mistake, if we attribute luxuries to the rich alone. It is estimated, on the best authority, that of the taxes paid by the laboring poor of England, out of every twenty-one shillings, eleven shillings and fourpence were paid for what was, in the economic view, not necessary, and, in the sanitary view, not beneficial. If we estimate the amount expended for luxuries by the corresponding class in our own country, we shall find it as much greater as nature is more liberal, labor more free, taxes lighter, and the workingman more ambitious and sanguine; while, if we turn to France, we find the proportion much smaller; yet even here the laborer has his holiday, and his theatre or fair.

Paradoxical as it may sound, it may be said that a certain amount of luxuries forms a part of the necessary wages of the laborer in these countries. Indeed, it is true of all countries; for the human mind and the human body will have rest and recreation in some form. Man is not all laborer. Some indulgence is the demand of that part of his nature which looks out on another field than production and accumulation. And in this light we see the vast importance of such social and moral influences as shall determine the laboring classes to those relaxations and amusements which really refresh both mind and body, and elevate the whole tone of being. If we mistake not, a mighty industrial revolution, that promises effects more searching and permanent than many illustrious victories in arms, is now being accomplished by the divergence in taste