mind, were the principal causes. But if to a depraved difpofition, we suppose to be joined a weakness of spirit; if to an admiration, and defire of riches, be joined an averfion to danger or business; if those orders of men whofe valour is required by the public, cease to be brave; if the members of fociety, in general, have not those personal qualities which are required to fill the stations of equality, or of honour, to which they are invited by the forms of the state; they must fink to a depth from which their imbecility, even more than their depraved inclinations, may prevent their rife.

SE C T. II.

Of Luxury.

E are far from being agreed on the application of the term luxury, or on that degree of its meaning which is confiftent with national prosperity, or with the moral rectitude of our nature. It is fometimes employed to fignify a manner of life which we think neceffary to civilization, and even to happiness. It is, in our panegyric of polished ages, the parent of arts, the fupport of commerce, and the minister of national greatness, and of opulence. It is, in our cenfure of degenerate manners, the fource of corruption, and the prefage of national declenfion and ruin. It is admired, and it is blamed'; it is treated as ornamental and useful; and it is profcribed as a vice.

WITH all this diverfity in our judgments, we are generally uniform in employing the term to fignify that complicated apparatus which mankind devise for the ease and convenience of life. Their buildings, furniture, equipage, cloathing, train of domestics, refinement of the table, and, in general, all that affemblage which is rather intended to please the fancy, than to obviate real wants, and which is rather ornamental than useful..

WHEN

Part VI. WHEN we are difpofed, therefore, under the appellation of luxury, to rank the enjoyment of these things among the vices, we either tacitly refer to the habits of fenfuality, debauchery, prodigality, vanity, and arrogance, with which the poffeffion of high fortune is fometimes attended; or we apprehend a certain measure of what is neceffary to human life, beyond which all enjoyments are fuppofed to be exceffive and vicious. When, on the contrary, luxury is made an article of national luftre and felicity, we only think of it as an innocent confequence of the unequal diftribution of wealth, and as a method by which different ranks are rendered mutually dependent, and mutually useful. The poor are made to practise arts, and the rich to reward them. The public itself is made a gainer by what seems to waste its ftock, and it receives a perpetual increase of wealth, from the influence of thofe growing appetites, and delicate tastes, which seem to menace confumption and ruin.

Ir is certain, that we muft either, together with the commercial arts, fuffer their fruits to be enjoyed, and even, in fome measure, admired; or, like the Spartans, prohibit the art itself, while we are afraid of its confequences, or while we think that the conveniencies it brings exceed what nature requires. But we may propofe to ftop the advancement of arts at any stage of their progress, and still incur the cenfure of luxury from those who have not advanced so far. The

house

houfe-builder and the carpenter at Sparta were limited to the ufe of the axe and the faw; but a Spartan cottage might have passed for a palace in Thrace: and if the difpute were to turn on the knowledge of what is physically neceffary to the preservation of human life, as the standard of what is morally lawful, the faculties of phyfic, as well as of morality, would probably divide on the subject, and leave every individual, as at prefent, to find some rule for himself. The cafuift, for the most part, confiders the practice of his own age and condition, as a ftandard for mankind. If in one age or condition, he condemn the use of a coach, in another he would have no lefs cenfured the wearing of fhoes; and the very perfon who exclaims against the firft, would probably not have spared the fecond, if it had not been already familiar in ages before his own. A cenfor born in a cottage, and accustomed to fleep upon ftraw, does not propose that men fhould return to the woods and the caves for fhelter; he admits the reafonableness and the utility of what is already familiar; and apprehends an excefs and corruption, only in the newest refinement of the rifing generation.

THE clergy of Europe have preached fucceffively against every new fashion, and every innovation in drefs. The modes of youth are the subject of censure to the old; and modes of the laft age, in their turn, are matter of ridicule to the flippant, and the young. Of this there is not always a better account to be given, than that the old are difpofed to be fevere, and the young to be merry.

THE argument against many of the conveniencies of life, drawn from the mere confideration of their not being neceffary, was equally proper in the mouth of the savage, who diffuaded from the firft applications of industry, as it is in that of the moralift, who infifts on the vanity of the laft. Our ancestors," he might say, "found their dwelling under this rock; they gathered their food in "the foreft; they allayed their thirft from the fountain ; "and they were clothed in the fpoils of the beast they "had flain. Why fhould we indulge a false delicacy,

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or require from the earth fruits which fhe is not ac"customed to yield? The bow of our fathers is already too ftrong for our arms; and the wild beast begins to "lord it in the woods."

THUS the moralift may have found, in the proceedings of every age, thofe topics of blame, from which he is fo much disposed to arraign the manners of his own; and our imbarraffment on the fubject, is, perhaps, but a part of that general perplexity which we undergo, in trying to define moral characters by external circumftances, which may, or may not, be attended with faults in the mind and the heart. One man finds a vice in the wearing of linen; another does not, unless the fabric be fine and if, mean-time, it be true, that a person may be dreffed in manufacture, either coarse or fine; that he may fleep in the fields, or lodge in a palace; tread upon carpet, or plant his foot on the ground; while the mind either retains, or has loft, its penetration, and its vigour, and the heart its affection to mankind, it is vain, under any fuch circumflance, to feck for the diftinctions of

virtue