Nothing assists prodigality and unprofitableness in the consumption of labour, so much as paper credits, bank notes, and the whole system of artificial currency; which, by giving facilities to the transfer of values, and throwing into circulation the whole gross amount of labour, cause prodigality and waste in every branch of consumption. In addition to this, a greater idea of importance and preciousness being attached to gold and silver, and paper money being less thought of, causes the latter to be used with less parsimony, and a consequent waste of values ensues, Under the credit system, too, money being easy of acquisition on loan, without the intervention of labour, prodigality of consumption is necessarily encouraged by it. The facility of obtaining loans furnished by banks, and the concomitants of idleness, luxury, relaxed morality, and broken credit, all tend to produce useless and augmented consumption of values, as well as a diminution of production.

Luxury is unquestionably a wasteful consumption of value, as well as a pernicious one; it is wasteful, because no luxury can be necessary, for they supply no want it is pernicious, because all luxuries deteriorate the faculties of man, impair his intellectual, moral, and physical energies, and consequently destroy their productive power. The consumption of this class of values, of course, employs thousands of labourers, who cannot consume any portion of what they produce, so that, instead of adding to the wealth of the country by producing what contributes to existence, comfort, reproduction, or population, they only produce a commodity that is inimical to all the ends of civilization and industry. The mere result of luxury to him who produces it, that his labour is paid for, and industry is thus stimulated, is no argument in its favour; for men

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and agents employed in the most desolating tasks are paid for it, and it may stimulate them to further mischief-but this proves no beneficial result. In fine, the consumption of luxuries is a real annihilation of all the hands engaged in their production; it is the actual and positive destruction of ingenuity, skill, strength, and industry, and amounts to this, that industry is directed almost wholly into one channel of consumption, to gratify the rich and luxurious; the necessary consequence of which is, that poverty and starvation become the lot of the mass of the people. Thus it is, that one rich man's consumption in luxury, would support a score, or a hundred poor families in ease and comfort. For the labour of those who produce luxuries is a 'real abstraction from the stock of useful industry, and therefore it is, that every augmentation of luxury is an increase of poverty. Hence the ancient remark, that every palace creates hundreds of hovels; hence and so the fact, that luxury, magnificence, ostentation, cause the alms-house and the penitentiary to erect their walls in the midst of splendid cities, and luxurious capitals.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Of Population.

NATURE, ever harmonious in her plans-ever beneficent in her economy-ever wise in her decrees, presents an unvaried scheme of wisdom in all her works; adapting with admirable skill means to ends; and never omitting to provide, by infallible laws, for the consummation of her perfect system.

But the most beautiful and beneficent of all the systems of nature, have been made liable to the influence of human conduct; and folly, wickedness, and despotism, have often defeated the noblest purposes of God, by tainting them with the corrupting, the debasing passions of man.

The monopolies, injustice, and oppression of the feudal systems of Europe, combined with the modern corruptions of politics, have caused the question to arise, whether nature has provided the means of subsisting a progressive population, without incurring the danger of want, and the visitation of famine. And this question too, has been raised in a country in which the land is held in virtue of conquest, by an ambitious and unprincipled invader, who dispensed it to his rapacious barons, as caprice, partiality, or passion dictated; in a country in which the laws of primogeniture and entails are established-where thousands of acres are allotted for the parks and pleasure grounds of a single nobleman, and not a perch for the hovel of a labourer, not a field on which he can cultivate the elements of life; in a

country, where the waste lands of the crown would subsist nearly half her population—where luxury, profusion, waste, prodigality, affluence, and refinement, are carried to an excess which surpasses Assyrian voluptuousness, and rivals Roman sensuality; a country whose nobility squander upon gewgaws, vice, and dissipation, more than would support double her population in ease and comfort, and whose capital wastes more of the bread of life, than would pamper her famished thousands with satiety !

That the ability of the earth to maintain its popula tion in comfort, should be questioned in such a country, may well excite the unphilosophical emotion of surprise. It is quite as reasonable, as would be the con duct of an Irish absentee, who should portray his native isle as afflicted with sterility, blast, and mildew; incapable of affording nourishment to her children, and convicting nature of a fatal oversight in not providing the means of sustaining her growing population of human beings.

We have seen in the foregoing chapters, that the primary laws of nature have decreed, that to support life man has been doomed to labour; and that those who never toil depend for subsistence upon others. Corresponding to this beneficent instinct, how bountifully has nature spread the materials for labour before all her sons. The expansive earth invites every hand to open its bosom, and avail himself of its treasures. But too indulgent to our wants-too prodigal of her precious bounties, nature has so engrafted the principle of increase in all that is necessary to subsist human life, that the labour of a few will sustain thousands, and banish every apprehension of want from the mind. By her endless fecundity, she even makes us presumptu

ous, and invites us to indolence, tempts us to injustice, and inspires us with rapacity to grasp at the very food that wards off famine from our fellow creature. The gift of superabundance proves the motive to undue accumulation. In the midst of plenty, avarice, power, ambition, extortion-all start up to monopolize the bounties of nature, and create a famine to seven eighths of mankind, in order that the remaining fraction may riot in gluttony, and luxuriate in excess. And the famine thus caused by the diabolical passions of man, is attempted to be ascribed to nature; whilst the pampered scribes of a voluptuous nobility coolly sit down, and under the pretence of philosophy, affect to calculate that nature has not provided subsistence for her children.

When the fiat of nature went forth to man," increase and multiply," the earth teemed with fertility, and every fruit swelled with the nutritious elements of life; the herds thickened in the forests, the fish swarmed in the sea, and the birds of the air shadowed the sun with their pinions.

And shall the avarice, oppression, and injustice of man turn all these to dearth and desolation? The voice of reason and of liberty respond a negative; and the just policy of nations opposes a barrier to the removal of the most powerful restraint upon the worst passions of our being.

The ancients estimated the strength and wisdom of a state by their qualities; 1st, the number of people— 2d, their stock of industry-3d, their populousness, and capacity of procreation-4th, their equality of condition. These criteria were infallible, for they imply intelligence, virtue, industry, marriage, and public justice.