tunes of the first families of the empire, afflicted the people with the lamentable sight of decayed patricians stripped of wealth and credit, it vitiated public morals, broke the bonds of civil and political dependence, caused the inequality of conditions to disappear, corrupted private manners, and destroyed every notion of order, consideration and respect.

Finally, by absorbing the capitals of a great number of families, luxury diminished the quantity of labour which they would have supported, weakened the national income, and impoverished the state. Such capitals, by being scattered among a number of individuals, instead of encouraging them to labour, frequently incited them to a greater consumption, and consequently contributed to increase the general misery.

It is therefore very justly that all the authors of antiquity recommended economy, nay, honoured parsimony; and imputed to luxury the decay of morals, the ruin of private fortunes, and the loss of the state. In such an order of things, avarice was a virtue, and luxury a sort of public crime.

In the middle age, under the feudal system, at a time when the state was divided among great and petty land-owners and bondmen, and when the political constitution was purely aristocratical, it was thought necessary to guard against the dissipation of large fortunes, which were justly considered as the basis of the state. This gave rise to the laws of primogeniture and entail, and others which it is useless to enumerate here. But these political laws, by preserving fortunes in families, impoverished all the

individuals of the nation. They enriched a few at the expence of all, and created general misery to establish a few private fortunes. What luxury could ever have been pregnant with greater calamities !

However, every enlightened individual who was initiated in the mystery of that legislation, justly lifted his voice against luxury, and condemned it with as much severity as the nations of antiquity.

Inheritors of their doctrine, our political, moral and economical writers have almost all re-produced it in their writings; and though this doctrine be no longer applicable to our manners, to our interests, to our politics; though it be as fatal to us as it was beneficial to the people for whom it was designed, it still predominates in our books; and all that the boldest innovators have dared to advance is, that luxury becomes prejudicial only when it deprives the prodigal of the means of performing his individual, domestic, and social duties. Will men then never cease to judge of the present by the past, and of the future by their fears; will they not at length perceive that, whatever may be the circumstances that have led modern nations to the mercantile system, their political, moral, and economical condition has no conformity with and bears no relation to that of the nations of antiquity and the middle age? If those nations were interested in condemning private luxury, the moderns have nothing to dread from it, and need not take any measures to repress or to guard against luxury. Wherever wealth proceeds from general labour, there is no danger that it will be dissipated by the private luxury of a smaller or greater number of individuals.

The general tendency of commercial nations can never be towards dissipation, luxury and magnificence.

But that which is not to be apprehended from in-, dividuals, may be done by governments; and it is in this respect only that wealth may run some risk.

The revenue of governments generally consists of contributions levied upon individuals. If, either from a love of luxury and magnificence, or from the passion of conquest, or from a bad economical system, or from a vicious administration, these contributions are raised to an excessive height, the efforts of the individual members of the nation, to repair by their labour and economy the evil of an excessive expenditure of government, must prove abortive. If this expenditure, coupled with that of the individual members of the nation, exceeds the annual produce of the national labour, the aggregate of the nation is placed in the same predicament as an individual who spends more than his income. Capitals are swallowed up, labour is left to pine, its produce is diminished, population reduced, and the impoverished nation declines, and is perhaps exhausted to such a degree that it is no longer ranked among free and independent powers.

Though it be therefore of little importance in the mercantile system, whether some individuals consume above their income or not, both the prosperity and the safety of the state require that the totality of the nation should not consume more than the portion of the annual produce reserved for general consumption. To suppose that, the more there is consumed, the more is produced, is, as has been well observed by a

modern writer, to suppose "that it is as easy to produce as to consume;" that the powers of labour are inexhaustible, and its produce unlimited. Such a monstrous doctrine could proceed only from absolute ignorance of the causes of the formation and preservation of wealth; which ignorance ought to be completely dispelled by the progress of political economy, and the propagation of its salutary and conservatory tenets,

Individuals and nations cannot possibly consume more than their income without exposing themselves to certain ruin; they ought not even to consume as much as their income. Whenever they do so, their condition becomes precarious, and national wealth is endangered by the many accidents of life, national calamities, and all the evils which are continually assailing the human race. Every national calamity inflicts an injury upon capital, affects labour, diminishes its produce, impoverishes the nation, and, in proportion as it is serious and lasting, influences its power and the grandeur of its destinies.

A distinction ought however again to be made between individuals and the state.

Although the expenditure of Individuals should fully absorb their income, it not only is not prejudicial to national wealth, but may even contribute to its increase. The desire of comforts, the relish of enjoyments, and the love of pleasure, are powerful incitements to labour, and induce the labourer to multiply the produce of his labour; and in that case it may truly be affirmed, that he labours more in pro

portion as he consumes more, and that he is so much the richer, as his expenses are more considerable. In this instance, those few economical and moral writers are perfectly right, who praise luxury, and attribute to it a large share in the increase of modern wealth, and even in the civilization of individuals and nations

A modern French writer opposes this system, and asserts that consumption is not a cause, but an effect; that, in order to consume, it is necessary to purchase; and that people purchase but with what they have produced.*

This opinion, if it were correct, would completely overthrow the mercantile system, which this author has however praised and extolled throughout his work. We must therefore regard it as a mere mistake proceeding from inattention. Yet it must be refuted, because it attacks the fundamental principles of the science.

The mercantile system rests on the interchange of the produce of general labour; but the progress of this interchange would have been slow and perhaps even uncertain, if it had always been considered as necessary that the exchanged produce should really exist at the time of the exchange, and if people could have procured what they had not, merely with what they had. But through a combination peculiar to the mercantile system, people obtain what they have not, with the mere promise of furnishing another produce not yet existing. The simple promise of giving a commodity at some future time is equivalent to the

Jean Baptiste de Say; Traité d'Econ. Pol. Paris, 1803.