as many are offended by, and nobody loves, this sort of people, no one shows them more than the most common civility and respect, and scarcely that; and this frequently puts them out of humor, and draws them into disputes and contentions.

If they aim at attaining some advantage in rank or fortune, nobody wishes them success, or will stir a step or speak a word, to favor their pretensions. If they incur public censure or disgrace, no one will defend or excuse, and many join to aggravate their misconduct, and render them completely odious. If these people will not change this bad habit, and condescend to be pleased with what is pleasing, without fretting themselves and others about the contraries, it is good for others to avoid an acquaintance with them, which is always disagreeable, and sometimes very inconvenient, especially when one finds oneself entangled in their quarrels.

An old philosophical friend of mine was grown, from experience, very cautious in this particular, and carefully avoided any intimacy with such people. He had, like other philosophers, a thermometer, to show him the heat of the weather, and a barometer, to mark when it was likely to prove good or bad; but there being no instrument invented to discover, at first sight, this unpleasing disposition in a person, he, for that purpose, made use of his legs; one of which was remarkably handsome, the other, by some accident, crooked and deformed. If a stranger, at the first interview, regarded his ugly leg more than his handsome one, he doubted him. If he spoke of it, and took no notice of the handsome leg, that was sufficient to determine my philosopher to have no farther acquaintance with him.

Every body has not this two-legged instrument; but every one, with a little attention, may observe signs of that carping, fault-finding disposition, and take the same resolution of avoiding the acquaint

ance of those infected with it. I therefore advise those critical, querulous, discontented, unhappy people, that, if they wish to be respected and beloved by others, and happy in themselves, they should leave off looking at the ugly leg.

EXTRACT XVIII.

Luxury, Idleness, and Industry.

FRANKLIN.

It is wonderful how preposterously the affairs of this world are managed. Naturally one would imagine that the interest of a few individuals should give way to general interest. But individuals manage their affairs with so much more application, industry, and address, than the public do theirs, that general interest most commonly gives way to parti

cular.

We assemble parliaments and councils, to have the benefit of their collected wisdom; but we necessarily have, at the same time, the inconvenience of their collected passions, prejudices, and private interests. By the help of these, artful men overpower their wisdom, and dupe its possessors; and, if we may judge by the acts, arrests, and edicts, all the world over, for regulating commerce, an assembly of great men is the greatest fool upon earth.

I have not yet, indeed, thought of a remedy for luxury. I am not sure that, in a great state, it is capable of a remedy, nor that the evil is in itself always so great as it is represented. Suppose we include, in the definition of luxury, all unnecessary expense; and then let us consider whether laws to prevent such expense are possible to be executed in a great country, and whether, if they could be executed, our people generally would be happier, or even

richer. Is not the hope of being, one day, able to purchase and enjoy luxuries, a great spur to labor and industry? May not luxury, therefore, produce more than it consumes, if, without such a spur, people would be, as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent?

In our commercial towns upon the seacoast, fortunes will occasionally be made. Some of those who grow rich, will be prudent, live within bounds, and preserve what they have gained for their posterity: others, fond of showing their wealth, will be extravagant, and ruin themselves. Laws cannot prevent this; and, perhaps, it is not always an evil to the public. A shilling spent idly by a fool, may be picked up by a wise person who knows better what to do with it. It is therefore not lost. A vain, silly fellow builds a fine house, furnishes it richly, lives in it expensively, and, in a few years, ruins himself. But the masons, carpenters, smiths, and other honest tradesmen, have been, by his employ, assisted in maintaining and raising their families; the farmer has been paid for his labor, and encouraged; and the estate is now in better hands.

In some cases, indeed, certain modes of luxury may be a public evil, in the same manner as it is a private one. If there be, for instance, a nation that exports its beef and linen, to pay for the importation of claret and porter, while a great part of its people live upon potatoes, and wear no shirts, wherein does it differ from the sot who lets his family starve, and sells his clothes to buy drink? Our American commerce is, I confess, a little in this way. We sell our victuals to the islands for rum and sugar, substantial necessaries of life for superfluities. But we have plenty, and live well nevertheless; though, by being soberer, we might be richer.

the

The vast quantity of forest 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 we have seen among the inhabitants of the seaports, is judging from an improper sample. The people of the trading towns may be rich and luxurious, while the country possesses all the virtues that tend to promote happiness and public prosperity. Those towns are not much regarded by the country; they are hardly considered as an essential part of the States; and the experience of the last war has shown that their being in possession of the enemy did not necessarily draw on the subjection of the country, which bravely continued to maintain its freedom and independence, notwithstanding.

It has been computed by some political arithmetician, that if every man and woman would work for four hours, each day, on something useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life; want and misery would be banished out of the world; and the rest of the twenty-four hours might be leisure and pleasure.

What occasions, then, so much want and misery? It is the employment of men and women in works that produce neither the necessaries nor the conveniences of life, who, with them who do nothing, consume necessaries raised by the laborious.

To explain this. The first elements of wealth are obtained by labor, from the earth and waters. I have land, and raise corn. With this if I feed a family that does nothing, my corn will be consumed, and, at the end of the year, I shall be no richer than I was at the beginning. But if, while I feed them, I employ them, some in spinning, others in making bricks, etc., 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 whom

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 shall therefore be the poorer for this fiddling man, unless the rest of my family work more or eat less, to make up the deficiency he occasions.

Look round the world, and see the millions employed in doing nothing, or in something that amounts to nothing, when the necessaries and conveniences of life are in question. What is the bulk of commerce, for which we fight and destroy each other, but the toil of millions for superfluities, to the great hazard and loss of many lives, by the constant dangers of the sea? How much labor is spent in building and fitting great ships, to go to China and Arabia, for tea and coffee, to the West Indies for sugar, to America for tobacco! These things cannot be called the necessaries of life; for our ancestors lived very comfortably without them.

A question may be asked; could all these people now employed in raising, making, or carrying superfluities, be subsisted by raising necessaries? I think they might. The world is large, and a great part of it still uncultivated. Many hundred millions of acres in Asia, Africa, and America, are still in a forest; and a great deal even in Europe. On a hundred acres of this forest a man might become a substantial 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 Herschel's telescope; so vast are the regions still in wood.

It is, however, some comfort to reflect, that, upon the whole, the quantity of industry and prudence among mankind exceeds the quantity of idleness and folly. Hence the increase of good buildings, farms cultivated, and populous cities filled with wealth, all