1782 Essays = 
Gaul, Germany, and Britain were in the time of the 
Romans, inhabited by people little richer than our 
savages, and consider the wealth they at present pos- 
sess, in numerous well-built cities, improved farms, 
rich movables, magazines stocked with valuable 
manufactures, to say nothing of plate, jewels, and 
coined money; and all this, notwithstanding their 
bad, wasteful, plundering governments, and their 
mad, destructive wars; and yet luxury and extrav- 
agant living have never suffered much restraint in 
those countries. Then consider the great proportion 
of industrious frugal farmers inhabiting the interior 
parts of these American States, and of whom the 
body of our nation consists: and judge whether it is 
possible that the luxury of our seaports can be suffi- 
cient to ruin such a country. If the importation of 
foreign luxuries could ruin a people, we should prob- 
ably have been ruined long ago; for the British 
nation claimed a right, and practised it, of import- 
ing among us, not only the superfluities of their own 
production, but those of every nation under heaven; 
we bought and consumed them, and yet we flour- 
ished and grew rich. At present, our independent 
governments may do what we could not then do, 
discourage by heavy duties, or prevent by heavy 
prohibitions, such importations, and thereby grow 
richer; if, indeed, which may admit of dispute, the 
desire of adorning ourselves with fine clothes, pos- 
sessing fine furniture, with elegant houses, etc., is not, 
by strongly inciting to labor and industry, the occa- 
sion of producing a greater value than is consumed 
in the gratification of that desire. 
oo 
ZK