We see around us a world under the powerful agency of this incentive; and whatever may be thought of the weakness or wickedness of mankind, the fairest side of the picture they present is that which their unwearied industry and active intelligence afford. At the same time, experience does not authorize us to believe that a necessity less urgent than that now existing, would excite their dormant powers, or furnish the appearance of energy we admire. On every side, to whatever age, or rank, or condition we look, an inherent principle of indolence betrays itself, which can only be expelled by the operation of a still more powerful desire.

In savage life, indolence puts on the appearance of a positive gratification, too valuable to be bartered for any return of prospective advantage, and only relinquished on the pressure of actual uneasiness. Among the lower classes in civilized society, much of the same principle is manifest. Some prefer any chance or precarious mode of seeking subsistence to

regular industry others are industrious till they have removed the urgency of immediate want, and, when that is satisfied, remain idle and dissolute till it returns again. The more gratifying sight of constant and contented exertion, still furnishes no countenance to the belief that it would be voluntarily undertaken, or continued without necessity. As we advance higher in the scale, we find the same necessity operating no less extensively, stimulating invention, giving stability to exertion, and, in the end, bringing all those talents to maturity by which mankind is no less benefited than adorned. Few of the most useful discoveries or acquirements, can be attained without such an unremitting attention, such a sacrifice of present enjoyment, as only a very powerful incentive can enforce if it were otherwise, why is this field of exertion left almost exclusively to those who are not born heirs of that plenty which a different dispensation might render universal? Why are the avocations which conduce most to the welfare of the species, seldom pursued by those who

are not driven to them by the strong hand of necessity, i. e. who can by any easier means comply with the instinctive principle of nature, and support a family in the rank and sphere to which they were born?*

It is as possible to picture to the imagination a race of men, who should require no stimulus to the exercise of their minds and powers, as it is to conceive a soil that should be fertile without cultivation. But our business is with the world as it exists, and with men as we find them and judging according to that experience, we may affirm without hesitation, that any ordinance which might establish universal plenty, would establish also universal indolence, and not only arrest civilization in its progress, but force it to retrograde, if it had once advanced. There is reason to believe that this effect has in some peculiar circumstances actually taken place; when a few tribes having left their parent and overpeopled

*See Chapter iii. p. 52, &c.

country, and found an unexpected plenty in some new abode, have lived upon that plenty till they have lost the arts of their ancestors, and left their posterity to work out anew, by the slow method of invention, the means of supplying wants or providing comfort.* How soon rude inventions are lost, when the necessity which first struck them out is removed, may be learnt from the example of the South Sea islanders, some of whom are now in greater distress from the precarious supply of iron upon which they depend, than before the visits of Europeans they had experienced from the total want of it. Be this, however, as it may, it is certain that the effect of plenty on savage nations is indolence and extravagance, till the supply that brought the evil is exhausted, and activity returns with the necessity for its exertion.

All travellers have observed in North America proofs of evident deterioration, in the traces and remains of useful arts which have been long utterly unknown in that country. The best account of these is now to be found in Humboldt's Researches.

All mankind, as far as we know, agree in the same propensities by nature, and owe their infinite varieties only to the circumstances of society. We have no right, therefore, to assume that the consequences of plenty would be different in America and in Europe; or that, if the necessity which has produced all the multiplied inventions and ornaments of civilized life, were once removed, the faculty to suggest them would be fostered, or the industry to perfect them survive. But who would be SO visionary as to affirm, that the comfort of society might be benefited by a system which excluded all the useful and ingenious arts; or the general good of mankind promoted by the extinction of all the liberal professions, the absence of all science and literature? Independence would be dearly purchased at the expense of refinement and cultivation; and universal plenty would afford a poor compensation for the gross ignorance into which mankind would be plunged.

For human labour, after all, is not sown