245 Benjamin Franklin [1784 
encouragement to increase building, which gives, em- 
ployment to an abundance of workmen, as does also 
the increased luxury and splendor of living of the 
inhabitants thus made richer. These workmen all 
demand and obtain much higher wages than any 
other part of the world would afford them, and are 
paid in ready money. This class of people therefore 
do not, or ought not, to complain of hard times; 
and they make a very considerable part of the city 
inhabitants. 
At the distance I live from our American fisheries, 
I cannot speak of them with any degree of certainty; 
but I have not heard that the labor of the valuable 
race of men employed in them is worse paid, or that 
they meet with less success, than before the Revolu- 
tion. The whalemen, indeed, have been deprived of 
one market for their oil; but another, I hear, is 
opening for them which it is hoped may be equally 
advantageous, and the demand is constantly increas- 
ing for their spermaceti candles, which therefore bear 
a much higher price than formerly. 
There remain the merchants and shopkeepers. Of 
these, though they make but a small part of the 
whole nation, the number is considerable, too great 
indeed for the business they are employed in; for 
the consumption of goods in every country has its 
limits, the faculties of the people—that is, their abil- 
ity to buy and pay—being equal only to a certain 
quantity of merchandise. If merchants calculate 
amiss on this proportion and import too much, they 
will of course find the sale dull for the overplus, and 
some of them will say that trade languishes. They 
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