2. Benjamin Franklin [1784 
people of the trading towns may be rich and luxuri- 
ous, while the country possesses all the virtues that 
tend to promote happiness and public prosperity. 
Those towns are not 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 arithme- 
tician, 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 neces- 
saries 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 necessaries nor conveniences 
of life, who, with those 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 
nD