make a more proper distribution of employment among them. When
the work to be done consists of a number of parts, to keep every
man constantly employed in one way requires a much greater
capital than where every man is occasionally employed in every
different part of the work. When we compare, therefore, the state
of a nation at two different periods, and find, that the annual
produce of its land and labour is evidently greater at the latter
than at the former, that its lands are better cultivated, its
manufactures more numerous and more flourishing, and its trade
more extensive, we may be assured that its capital must have
increased during the interval between those two periods, and that
more must have been added to it by the good conduct of some than
had been taken from it either by the private misconduct of others
or by the public extravagance of government. But we shall find
this to have been the case of almost all nations, in all
tolerably quiet and peaceable times, even of those who have not
enjoyed the most prudent and parsimonious governments. To form a
right judgment of it, indeed, we must compare the state of the
country at periods somewhat distant from one another. The
progress is frequently so gradual that, at near periods, the
improvement is not only not sensible, but from the declension
either of certain branches of industry, or of certain districts
of the country, things which sometimes happen though the country
in general be in great prosperity, there frequently arises a
suspicion that the riches and industry of the whole are decaying.
The annual produce of the land and labour of England, for
example, is certainly much greater than it was, a little more
than a century ago, at the restoration of Charles II. Though, at
present, few people, I believe, doubt of this, yet during this
period, five years have seldom passed away in which some book or
pamphlet has not been published, written, too, with such
abilities as to gain some authority with the public, and
pretending to demonstrate that the wealth of the nation was fast
declining, that the country was depopulated, agriculture
neglected, manufactures decaying, and trade undone. Nor have
these publications been all party pamphlets, the wretched
offspring of falsehood and venality. Many of them have been
written by very candid and very intelligent people, who wrote
nothing but what they believed, and for no other reason but
because they believed it.
The annual produce of the land and labour of England, again,
was certainly much greater at the Restoration, than we can
suppose it to have been about an hundred years before, at the
accession of Elizabeth. At this period, too, we have all reason
to believe, the country was much more advanced in improvement
than it had been about a century before, towards the close of the
dissensions between the houses of York and Lancaster. Even then
it was, probably, in a better condition than it had been at the
Norman Conquest, and at the Norman Conquest than during the
confusion of the Saxon Heptarchy. Even at this early period, it
was certainly a more improved country than at the invasion of
Julius Caesar, when its inhabitants were nearly in the same state
with the savages in North America.
In each of those periods, however, there was not only much
private and public profusion, many expensive and unnecessary
wars, great perversion of the annual produce from maintaining
productive to maintain unproductive hands; but sometimes, in the
confusion of civil discord, such absolute waste and destruction
of stock, as might be supposed, not only to retard, as it
certainly did, the natural accumulation of riches, but to have
left the country, at the end of the period, poorer than at the
beginning. Thus, in the happiest and most fortunate period of
them all, that which has passed since the Restoration, how many
disorders and misfortunes have occurred, which, could they have
been foreseen, not only the impoverishment, but the total ruin of
the country would have been expected from them? The fire and the
plague of London, the two Dutch wars, the disorders of the
Revolution, the war in Ireland, the four expensive French wars of
1688, 1702, 1742, and 1756, together with the two rebellions of
1715 and 1745. In the course of the four French wars, the nation
has contracted more than a hundred and forty-five millions of
debt, over and above all the other extraordinary annual expense
which they occasioned, so that the whole cannot be computed at
less than two hundred millions. So great a share of the annual
produce of the land and labour of the country has, since the
Revolution, been employed upon different occasions in maintaining
an extraordinary number of unproductive hands. But had not those
wars given this particular direction to so large a capital, the
greater part of it would naturally have been employed in
maintaining productive hands, whose labour would have replaced,
with a profit, the whole value of their consumption. The value of
the annual produce of the land and labour of the country would
have been considerably increased by it every year, and every
year's increase would have augmented still more that of the
following year. More houses would have been built, more lands
would have been improved, and those which had been improved
before would have been better cultivated, more manufactures would
have been established. and those which had been established
before would have been more extended; and to what height the real
wealth and revenue of the country might, by this time, have been
raised, it is not perhaps very easy even to imagine.
But though the profusion of government must, undoubtedly,
have retarded the natural progress of England towards wealth and
improvement, it has not been able to stop it. The annual produce
of its land and labour is, undoubtedly, much greater at present
than it was either at the Restoration or at the Revolution. The
capital, therefore, annually employed in cultivating this land,
and in maintaining this labour, must likewise be much greater. In
the midst of all the exactions of government, this capital has
been silently and gradually accumulated by the private frugality
and good conduct of individuals, by their universal, continual,
and uninterrupted effort to better their own condition. It is
this effort, protected by law and allowed by liberty to exert
itself in the manner that is most advantageous, which has
maintained the progress of England towards opulence and
improvement in almost all former times, and which, it is to be
hoped, will do so in all future times. England, however, as it
has never been blessed with a very parsimonious government, so
parsimony has at no time been the characteristical virtue of its
inhabitants. It is the highest impertinence and presumption,
therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the
economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either
by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign
luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception,
the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well
after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people
with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state,
that of their subjects never will.
As frugality increases and prodigality diminishes the public
capital, so the conduct of those whose expense just equals their
revenue, without either accumulating or encroaching, neither
increases nor diminishes it. Some modes of expense, however, seem
to contribute more to the growth of public opulence than others.
The revenue of an individual may be spent either in things
which are consumed immediately, and in which one day's expense
can neither alleviate nor support that of another, or it may be
spent in things more durable, which can therefore be accumulated,
and in which every day's expense may, as he chooses, either
alleviate or support and heighten the effect of that of the
following day. A man of fortune, for example, may either spend
his revenue in a profuse and sumptuous table, and in maintaining
a great number of menial servants, and a multitude of dogs and
horses; or contenting himself with a frugal table and few
attendants, he may lay out the greater part of it in adorning his
house or his country villa, in useful or ornamental buildings, in
useful or ornamental furniture, in collecting books, statues,
pictures; or in things more frivolous, jewels, baubles, ingenious
trinkets of different kinds; or, what is most trifling of all, in
amassing a great wardrobe of fine clothes, like the favourite and
minister of a great prince who died a few years ago. Were two men
of equal fortune to spend their revenue, the one chiefly in the
one way, the other in the other, the magnificence of the person
whose expense had been chiefly in durable commodities, would be
continually increasing, every day's expense contributing
something to support and heighten the effect of that of the
following day: that of the other, on the contrary, would be no
greater at the end of the period than at the beginning. The
former, too, would, at the end of the period, be the richer man
of the two. He would have a stock of goods of some kind or other,
which, though it might not be worth all that it cost, would
always be worth something. No trace or vestige of the expense of
the latter would remain, and the effects of ten or twenty years
profusion would be as completely annihilated as if they had never
existed.
As the one mode of expense is more favourable than the other
to the opulence of an individual, so is it likewise to that of a
nation. The houses, the furniture, the clothing of the rich, in a
little time, become useful to the inferior and middling ranks of
people. They are able to purchase them when their superiors grow
weary of them, and the general accommodation of the whole people
is thus gradually improved, when this mode of expense becomes
universal among men of fortune. In countries which have long been
rich, you will frequently find the inferior ranks of people in
possession both of houses and furniture perfectly good and
entire, but of which neither the one could have been built, nor
the other have been made for their use. What was formerly a seat
of the family of Seymour is now an inn upon the Bath road. The
marriage-bed of James the First of Great Britain, which his queen
brought with her from Denmark as a present fit for a sovereign to
make to a sovereign, was, a few years ago, the ornament of an
alehouse at Dunfermline. In some ancient cities, which either
have been long stationary, or have gone somewhat to decay, you
will sometimes scarce find a single house which could have been
built for its present inhabitants. If you go into those houses
too, you will frequently find many excellent, though antiquated
pieces of furniture, which are still very fit for use, and which
could as little have been made for them. Noble palaces,
magnificent villas, great collections of books, statues, pictures
and other curiosities, are frequently both an ornament and an
honour, not only to the neighbourhood, but to the whole country
to which they belong. Versailles is an ornament and an honour to
France, Stowe and Wilton to England. Italy still continues to
command some sort of veneration by the number of monuments of
this kind which it possesses, though the wealth which produced
them has decayed, and though the genius which planned them seems
to be extinguished, perhaps from not having the same employment.
The expense too, which is laid out in durable commodities,
is favourable, not only to accumulation, but to frugality. If a
person should at any time exceed in it, he can easily reform
without exposing himself to the censure of the public. To reduce
very much the number of his servants, to reform his table from
great profusion to great frugality, to lay down his equipage
after he has once set it up, are changes which cannot escape the
observation of his neighbours, and which are supposed to imply
some acknowledgment of preceding bad conduct. Few, therefore, of
those who have once been so unfortunate as to launch out too far
into this sort of expense, have afterwards the courage to reform,
till ruin and bankruptcy oblige them. But if a person has, at any
time, been at too great an expense in building, in furniture, in
books or pictures, no imprudence can be inferred from his
changing his conduct. These are things in which further expense
is frequently rendered unnecessary by former expense; and when a
person stops short, he appears to do so, not because he has
exceeded his fortune, but because he has satisfied his fancy.
The expense, besides, that is laid out in durable
commodities gives maintenance, commonly, to a greater number of
people than that which is employed in the most profuse
hospitality. Of two or three hundredweight of provisions, which
may sometimes be served up at a great festival, one half,
perhaps, is thrown to the dunghill, and there is always a great
deal wasted and abused. But if the expense of this entertainment
had been employed in setting to work masons, carpenters,
upholsterers, mechanics, etc., a quantity of provisions, of equal
value, would have been distributed among a still greater number
of people who would have bought them in pennyworths and pound
weights, and not have lost or thrown away a single ounce of them.
In the one way, besides, this expense maintains productive, in
the other unproductive hands. In the one way, therefore, it
increases, in the other, it does not increase, the exchangeable
value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the
country.
I would not, however, by all this be understood to mean that
the one species of expense always betokens a more liberal or
generous spirit than the other. When a man of fortune spends his
revenue chiefly in hospitality, he shares the greater part of it
with his friends and companions; but when he employs it in
